[Bug localedata/24366] New: la_VA locale support

[Bug localedata/24366] New: la_VA locale support

[nicolalucasbuescher+bugzilla at gmail dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

            Bug ID: 24366
           Summary: la_VA locale support
           Product: glibc
           Version: unspecified
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P2
         Component: localedata
          Assignee: unassigned at sourceware dot org
          Reporter: nicolalucasbuescher+bugzilla at gmail dot com
                CC: libc-locales at sourceware dot org
  Target Milestone: ---

Currently, there is no locale support for Latin (la_VA) in glibc. Since, iirc,
the address, date, time, etc info for the Vatican is identical to those for
Italy, this can easily be created based on the it_IT locale definition, with
minor changes for the language and country.

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[nicolalucasbuescher+bugzilla at gmail dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

--- Comment #1 from nicolalucasbuescher+bugzilla at gmail dot com ---
Created attachment 11707
  --> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=11707&action=edit
Create la_VA locale based on it_IT

And the corresponding patch.

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[jakub at redhat dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |jakub at redhat dot com

--- Comment #2 from Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com> ---
For la_VA, perhaps more appropriate would be to use the names of days used in
the church, so Dominica, Feria Secunda, Feria Tertia, Feria Quarta, Feria
Quinta, Feria Sexta and Sabbato.

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[digitalfreak at lingonborough dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

Rafal Luzynski <digitalfreak at lingonborough dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |digitalfreak@lingonborough.
                   |                            |com

--- Comment #3 from Rafal Luzynski <digitalfreak at lingonborough dot com> ---
I hesitate to add such locales.  My point is that Latin language does not have
native speakers.  We will not make anybody's life easier supporting Latin
language in Linux.  I believe people who could be potential users of la_VA
would rather choose their native languages in their computers, like Italian,
Spanish, German, and so on.

However, I don't want to close this as "WONTFIX" yet because maybe I am missing
something.

By the way, the patch contains some technical issues but I don't want to
discuss them here because I don't want to suggest that I will accept the patch
if they are corrected.

See also: bug 21919.

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[nicolalucasbuescher+bugzilla at gmail dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

--- Comment #4 from nicolalucasbuescher+bugzilla at gmail dot com ---
Rafal, that's certainly a fair point. My point of reference is that, while it
may or may not be appropriate to compare the feature set of Linux to other OSs,
in both macOS and Windows 10 you are able to set your locale/language to Latin
(lingua latina). In both cases, the setting applies only to the locale used for
applications, and Latin is not provided as a display language (what I would
call a second-class locale). But this enables applications to support Latin as
a language option.

Technically you can also do this in Linux without explicit glibc support, and I
did, but the fact that there is no actual locale file crashes some programs,
Dropbox being one. This fact that apps can actually crash is the reason I filed
a bug.

I'm not deeply familiar with how locales work in Linux, but my thought was that
having an la_VA locale would enable applications to support the language for
spell-checking, which I think would be a very good use-case for the locale,
considering that many many people still work with Latin, even though there are
no native speakers.

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[priest at johnromanodorazio dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

John R. D'Orazio <priest at johnromanodorazio dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |priest at johnromanodorazio dot co
                   |                            |m

--- Comment #5 from John R. D'Orazio <priest at johnromanodorazio dot com> ---
I would second the addition of a Latin locale. I have been running into a few
issues in the past couple years as I develop some applications in PHP that have
strings in a number of languages, among which is Latin. However since there is
no Latin locale in the system, none of the strings in Latin can be handled
through `gettext` or any kind of localization functions in PHP (such as the
soon to be deprecated `strftime`, or the newer `IntlDateFormatter`, just to
mention a couple examples). Which means I can handle all translatable strings
through `gettext` with the exception of Latin, which I have to hardcode into my
applications. This makes for an application that becomes hard to maintain, it
would be so much easier to just be able to handle any Latin translations just
like any other language that is supported by the application.

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[priest at johnromanodorazio dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

--- Comment #6 from John R. D'Orazio <priest at johnromanodorazio dot com> ---
Created attachment 13866
  --> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=13866&action=edit
latin - Vatican locale definition

Compared to the previously proposed patch, here are some of the choices I made
in this proposal:

1) since the Vatican doesn't have streets and street numbers, and any mail
going to the Vatican needs simply have an indication of a personal name and a
department, followed by the zip (00120) and the country name (generally "Città
del Vaticano" in Italian is used, so that's what I put as 'country_name' under
'LC_ADDRESS'. Keeping all this in mind I simplified the 'postal_fmt' control
characters.

2) Generally anyone being addressed at the Vatican is either the Pope, a
Cardinal, a Bishop, a Monsignor, or the head of a department (will often use a
title such as "Dottore"), so I formatted 'LC_NAME' with title, name and
surname.

3) Yes and No in Latin are expressed as "Sic" and "Non".

4) Monetarily, the Vatican uses the Euro, so this is the same as the Italian
locale

5) LC_NUMERIC cannot effectively be defined correctly, because Latin, even
ecclesiastical Latin, uses Roman numerals. However, I don't believe any kind of
POSIX locale supports anything besides Arabic numerals in ascending order from
0 to 9. So to make this work, I just left it the same as the Italian locale.

6) For the days of the Week, ecclesiastical Latin in fact uses "Feria Secunda"
or "Feria II" rather than the classical "Dies Lunae". Seeing that a practical
application for this could be formatting Dates to be printed in texts such as
the Roman Missal, and considering that in the Roman Missal the days of the week
are printed with Roman numerals rather than in word form ("Feria II" rather
than "Feria Secunda"), I opted for using the Roman numerals in the names of the
days of the week.

7) I'm not sure I fully know the format for the 'LC_CTYPE' section, but I
eyeballed the German locale to have an idea. Seeing that Latin has a few
ligatures, I'm guessing they need to be defined?

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[priest at johnromanodorazio dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

--- Comment #7 from John R. D'Orazio <priest at johnromanodorazio dot com> ---
I'm also seeing that there has been some activity on CLDR for a definition of
Latin among supported locales:

https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/main/seed/main/la.xml

However, I see that Ancient / Classical Latin has been used rather than
Ecclesiastical Latin in some cases in the proposed definition. I'm checking in
with the Pontifical Academy for the Latin Language (
https://www.pontificiaacademialatinitatis.org/ ) and with other academic
resources such as the Pontifical Institute for Higher Latin at the Salesian
University in Rome, for a consultation, so as to propose a correct definition
that will be useful for modern uses. If I have any updates from this
consultation, I will post them here.

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[maiku.fabian at gmail dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

Mike FABIAN <maiku.fabian at gmail dot com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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   Last reconfirmed|                            |2024-01-18
                 CC|                            |maiku.fabian at gmail dot com
             Status|UNCONFIRMED                 |WAITING
     Ever confirmed|0                           |1

--- Comment #8 from Mike FABIAN <maiku.fabian at gmail dot com> ---
@John R. D'Orazio Do you have any updates?

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[Bug localedata/24366] la_VA locale support

[priest at johnromanodorazio dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24366

--- Comment #9 from John R. D'Orazio <priest at johnromanodorazio dot com> ---
(In reply to Mike FABIAN from comment #8)
> @John R. D'Orazio Do you have any updates?

I've been keeping in touch with the Pontifical Academy for Latin, they've had a
few changes internally between one director and another. I'm now in touch with
the latest director and we're going to work out a meeting fairly soon, to look
into the possibility of defining the Latin locale with the CLDR survey tool. As
soon as I have any more news I'll post it here.

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