System Administration for NLS

Setting the LANG Environment Variable

The LANG environment variable must be set in order for HP VUE to use national language support. Setting LANG causes HP VUE to use the operating system's language-sensitive routines for character handling.

You can set LANG to any value supported by the operating system. Type locale to find out your current settings. Type locale -a to find our the languages supported by your operating system.

There are three ways to set LANG for HP VUE:

Using a Vuelogin Resource.  Setting the language by means of a vuelogin resource has these effects:

The resource is set by placing the following line in /etc/vue/config/Xconfig:

   Vuelogin.host_display.language:  language

For example, the following line sets LANG to sv_SE.roman8 (Swedish) on display hpcvxpae:0.

   Vuelogin.hpcvxpae_0.language: sv_SE.roman8

Setting LANG from the Options Menu. Setting the lanugage from the login screen Options menu causes HP VUE to use that value of LANG for the next session. LANG returns to its default value at the conclusion of the session.

Setting LANG in .vueprofile.  User-specific environment variables for HP VUE sessions can be placed in the file $HOME/.vueprofile.

To Set Other NLS Environment Variables

This section covers other NLS environment variables. These variables are not affected by the vuelogin language resource nor by the login screen option menu.

In the following examples, %L is translated by the system into the value of the LANG variable; %N is translated into the value of the application's class name (or the executable name for message catalogs).

Message Catalogs—The NLSPATH Environment Variable.  The NLSPATH environment variable determines the paths applications search for NLS message catalogs. HP VUE clients place NLS message catalogs in the NLS directories /usr/lib/nls/$LANG. Both LANG and NLSPATH must be set in order to use those message catalogs.

The proper value of NLSPATH depends on whether message catalogs exist for the current value of LANG.

Setting Language-Dependent App-Defaults.  The default location for the app-defaults for HP VUE and X clients is /usr/vue/app-defaults/%L, where %L is the the value of LANG, and %N is the file name. For example, if LANG is set to sv_SE.roman8 (swedish), then applications will look for their app-defaults in /usr/vue/app-defaults/sv_SE. If LANG is not set, %L is ignored, and applications look for their app-defaults in /usr/vue/app-defaults.

The XUSERFILESEARCHPATH environment variables provides the ability to change the location of app-defaults. For example, if it were desirable to move app-defaults to /home, then XUSERFILESEARCHPATH could be set to /home/app-defaults/%L/%N.

If you set XUSERFILESEARCHPATH in $HOME/.vueprofile, the value applies to all HP VUE and X clients you run. Non-clients will not find their resource files unless you link or copy them into the directory specified by XUSERFILESEARCHPATH.

For additional information about localized resources, refer to the discussions of the resource database in the Xt Intrinsics documentation.

Language-Dependent Bitmaps—the XBMLANGPATH Variable.  The XBMLANGPATH variable specifies the search path for language-dependent bitmaps. It lists the paths for bitmaps in this order:

Other Language-Dependent Resource Files

When LANG is set, HP VUE uses the following language-dependent default resource files:

Editing in HP VUE

All characters that can be entered from an HP keyboard into a terminal emulator window can also be entered into HP VUE text entry areas.

Remote Execution and NLS

You can invoke localized HP VUE applications on any remote execution host that has a similarly localized HP VUE installation. The values of the NLS-related environment variables on the host that is invoking the application are passed to the remote host when the application is started. However, the environment variables do not contain any host information. Thus, the message catalogs and application resource files must be in the same locations on both systems unless the $HOME/.softenv file on the remote host specifies the location of the files on the remote system.