Howto: Per Application Language Setting.

[sam3k]

Not really sure what forum this belongs on, but I do know that a lot of people want to use Zaurus for Japanese study, but also want to use it as an English PDA. There are numerous methods for getting both English and Japanese applications running on the same PDA, but here (I think) is a new one.

Normally you have to set your language in locale.conf, and that's system wide. However you can also set it per application.

For example:

If you have a Zaurus set to 'en' language (but have the Japanese fonts installed) you can type

Code: [Select]

LANG=ja textedit in Konsole / Terminal and have the text edit application load up in Japanese.

Conversely if you have your system language set to ja, you can type

Code: [Select]

LANG=en textedit to start textedit in English.

Now, the only drawback is that input methods take their language from the system setting, this isn't a problem for the Japanese keyboards they work with both 'en' or 'ja'. Unfortunately CRIM requires the system language to be set to 'ja'.

In order to get the Launcher to start an application with a different language it is necessary to create a shell script (does anyone know of a better way to do this), for example:

textedit-en.sh in /home/QtPalmtop/bin

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
LANG=en textedit(don't forget to chmod +x it)

Now duplicate /home/QtPalmtop/apps/Pim/textedit.desktop to textedit-en.desktop (or wherever your textedit.desktop file is) and change the exec line to textedit-en.sh and the name to something appropriate (e.g. Textedit-en). Don't forget to reboot Qtopia.

So there you have it, per application language settings. Hope this is of use.

Any questions?