No language support for renaming home directories in 12.3?

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I am looking to use openSUSE 12.3 KDE on two computers, but I can’t figure out how to get my home subdirectories translated into Swedish (Desktop → Skrivbord etc.), even after installing all language support I can find. I have tried a second installation on a virtual machine as well, but with the same result. Interestingly, I have previously had a 12.1 installation on a virtual machine where there was no problem of this kind. I don’t want to report this as a bug if it’s just a mistake on my part, so please, does anyone have some advice or soultion to this?

#2

Welcome to the forums

I simply added another language using System Settings>Input Devices>Keyboard>Layouts, changed to the language using the system tray icon, right clicked and selected Create New>Folder or Rename to rename an existing folder.

BTW beware of changing the names of folders with user names or anything which might be used in the path of a program but otherwise you should be OK to name/rename pretty well any folder.

#3

Thanks for the reply. I just feel that it should be done automatically in the same way that it has been done with other distros I have used, like Ubuntu and Scientific Linux. Changing those directory names manually seems to be like asking for trouble in the case they are linked to from somewhere else etc.

#4

I’ve never noticed such a bug. My filesystem is correctly translated to german.

I can think of two issues here:
1)Have you installed the system with swedish language-selection right in the first menu of your install-disk? If so, or having selected the language by yast during the install process, should do the trick.

  1. Make sure, you upgrade your system after the install. AFAIK language packs are not included and will be installed during the first update (Yast->Software Update->Automatic Updates *). After a short reboot the system should be set up correctly.

I’d be happy to see if this helps
Greetings, Simon*

#5

On 2013-08-05 07:36, Guttagrynna wrote:
>
> Thanks for the reply. I just feel that it should be done automatically
> in the same way that it has been done with other distros I have used,
> like Ubuntu and Scientific Linux. Changing those directory names
> manually seems to be like asking for trouble in the case they are linked
> to from somewhere else etc.

Which is probably why it is not done automatically, it can break things.
IMO, it can only be done at user creation.

I think that those directories should have a common name (English, for
example) and have symlinks to the user language (or the other way round,
it does not matter). This is so that programs can refer always to a name
that exists in all languages, because the complication of changing the
name for each language is bug-prone.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

#6

@Simon: Thanks for the advice. I had already done both these things, and in addition I searched the package installer for packages names containing l10n-sv and i18n-sv to see if there was something that seemed relevant. All other language support seems perfectly OK, for example Places in the Dolphin left-hand column is translated properly, as are the items there, like root and network.

@Carlos: I don’t have a strong opinion about what is the proper way to go about this, and the most inmportant for me now is to know what is the expected behaviour and what I should do to get my home directory the way I like. I tried renaming manually, as john_hudson suggested, and that worked pretty well this far, except for Desktop, in which case the renaming spawned a new directory named Desktop, which is the one that contains the items in the milky rectangle on the default KDE desktop.

Best regards,

Mårten

#7

You can change the location of the “Desktop” folder in “Configure Desktop”->“User Account Details”->“Paths”.
If you select a new folder, KDE will even ask you if it should move the content of the old folder to the new one.

#8

And regarding automatic translation of those folders: this can be configured in /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf.
It should contain the line “enabled=True”.
You need to have the package “xdg-user-dirs” installed (and maybe also “xdg-user-dirs-lang”).

See also: xdg-user-dirs

#9

Thanks! Installing “xdg-user-dirs-lang” (/etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf already contained the line “enabled=True”) did the trick. But only for addition of new users, not for existing ones. Anyway, I think I have all the answers I need now. Thanks to all who helped out!

Mårten

#10

An update to the previous post:

Running the command “xdg-user-dirs-update --force” changed the folder names for the existing user. The old folders (English) remained, but it seemed to be OK to delete them, just needed to move the contents first.

#11

As in all these cases were you want to change things inside users home directories, it is very dangerous to do anything “automatic”. You never know what references, links, etc. the user created in the mean time (e.g. hard coded file pathes in scripts).

Much better to create the user in the correct environment to begin with then to try to cure later.

#12

Well, open a bug at freedesktop.org then…:wink:

But I have to say, I agree with you.

#13

On 2013-08-08 12:06, hcvv wrote:
>
> As in all these cases were you want to change things inside users home
> directories, it is very dangerous to do anything “automatic”. You never
> know what references, links, etc. the user created in the mean time
> (e.g. hard coded file pathes in scripts).
>
> Much better to create the user in the correct environment to begin with
> then to try to cure later.

I have a user with both “Documents” and “Documentos”, “Público” and
“public_html”… but a single “Desktop”. Those directories should be
linked together, or files are not found.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

#14

For what? For something where I state that it can’t be done properly? :\

#15

No, for the fact that this is done by default, even if, as you state, it can’t be done properly.

Although I’m not sure right now if “xdg-user-dirs-update” is supposed to rename the folders when the locale is changed, or it only creates them in the appropriate locale if they don’t exist…

On the other hand, if all programs/scripts using those folders would read/source ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to get their localized names, it would even work… (that’s unrealistic of course :wink: )