Unable to set Serbian as Language

Little correction: the correct language packages for Croatian as a reference are here:

nebojsa@momcilo-desktop:~$ dpkg -l | grep -e "-hr"
ii firefox-locale-hr 66.0.2+build1-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 amd64 Croatian language pack for Firefox
ii gnome-getting-started-docs-hr 3.28.2-0ubuntu0.1 all Help a new user get started in GNOME (Croatian)
ii gnome-user-docs-hr 3.28.2+git20180715-0ubuntu0.1 all GNOME user's guide (Croatian)
ii hunspell-hr 1:6.0.3-3 all Croatian dictionary for hunspell
ii hyphen-hr 1:6.0.3-3 all Croatian hyphenation patterns
ii language-pack-gnome-hr 1:18.04+20180712 all GNOME translation updates for language Croatian
ii language-pack-gnome-hr-base 1:18.04+20180712 all GNOME translations for language Croatian
ii language-pack-hr 1:18.04+20180712 all translation updates for language Croatian
ii language-pack-hr-base 1:18.04+20180712 all translations for language Croatian
ii libreoffice-l10n-hr 1:6.0.7-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 all office productivity suite -- Croatian language package
ii thunderbird-locale-hr 1:60.6.1+build2-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 amd64 Croatian language pack for Thunderbird

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I recovered my long-lost launchpad account, please change reporter the account posting this message.

I can reproduce the problem. I also tried to install Catalan, which ought to result in two additional language options: Catalan and Catalan-Valencia. However, only Catalan shows up in the list of selectable languages in gnome-control-center.

This makes me suspect that the problem is somehow related to the use of locale names with modifiers.

$ locale -a | grep -E '^sr_RS|^ca_ES'
ca_ES.utf8
ca_ES.utf8@valencia
sr_RS
sr_RS@latin
sr_RS.utf8
sr_RS.utf8@latin

gnome-control-center may not handle such locale names properly.

As a workaround you can select Serbian using Language Support, i.e. the UI which shows up when you click the "Manage Installed Languages" button.

(I don't think anyone can change the bug reporter easily. I subscribed your other name too to this bug report; that's sufficient for now, right?)

Related upstream issue:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-desktop/issues/50

However, we have Ubuntu specific patches which affect locale modifiers, so this may well be an issue on the Ubuntu side.

I checked panels/common/cc-common-language.c and found that all the installed languages (including the two Serbian ones) are passed to the insert_language() function, whose label_own_lang variable is assigned the corresponding label. Hence the GHashTable returned by cc_common_language_get_initial_languages() ought to include it all.

Accidentally I found one reason why the Serbian language is hidden in the gnome-control-center GUI. In the add_all_languages() function in panels/common/cc-language-chooser.c the upstream code includes a call for gnome_get_all_locales(). That call is replaced by a call for gnome_get_all_languages() via ubuntu-region-langpack-install.patch. So I have submitted a MP where I propose that we simply disable ubuntu-region-langpack-install.patch for now (that feature for installing languages doesn't work anyway).

I think that the underlying reason why disabling that patch makes a difference is that the Serbian locale names according to /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED do not include the ".UTF-8" part. However, the alias "sr_RS.UTF-8" should really be considered valid.

With that patch disabled, two Serbian options show up in gnome-control-center. The bad news is that both refer to Serbian (Serbia), i.e. the sr_RS.UTF-8 locale, so you still can't choose the latin option (the sr_RS.UTF-8@latin locale) from gnome-control-center. (You can choose it from Language Support.)

Further investigation needed. The remaining problem is most likely related to the fact that Serbian-Latin (just as Catalan-Valencia) is represented by a locale with a locale modifier.

I uploaded a modified bionic package to a PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj/+archive/ubuntu/gnome-control-center

@momcilo: Please feel free to test.

@gunnarhj: works!
That was quick.

@momcilo: Great! It's not in the bionic archive yet, though. That will probably take a few weeks, since I'd like to also fix the problem with setting Serbian-Latin as language.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-control-center - 1:3.32.1-1ubuntu4

---------------
gnome-control-center (1:3.32.1-1ubuntu4) disco; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/git_nightlight_translations.patch:
    - define some strings in the night light dialog as translatable

  [ Gunnar Hjalmarsson ]
  * debian/patches/series:
    - Disable ubuntu-region-langpack-install.patch (partially fixes
      LP: #1823778).

  [ Iain Lane ]
  * Fix mismerged ubuntu-language-support patch. The UI was put in the wrong
    place in the .ui file, where it didn't show up.
  * debian/patches/info-use-UDisks-to-retrieve-disk-size.patch: Drop.
    This is upstream and no longer in the patch series.

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Fri, 12 Apr 2019 16:20:42 +0200

I think I have fixed the rest, including the modifier issue affecting e.g. Serbian-Latin and Catalan-Valencia.

* Re-opened the bug; new merge proposal for disco (if not too late)

* Added a bug task for bionic; separate merge proposal for that

And @momcilo: The PPA has been updated, so you can test the latest proposal if you like.

Thanks for this Gunnar. I'll upload. I do think that Matthias's comments upstream make sense though - presenting the modifiers directly does not look particularly great. It'd be good if we could address this somehow.

Uploaded for eoan and disco. bionic doesn't cherry-pick cleanly - Gunnar, can you prepare a branch please?

wait, you did, nm

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-control-center - 1:3.32.1-1ubuntu5

---------------
gnome-control-center (1:3.32.1-1ubuntu5) eoan; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/52_region_language.patch:
    Fix languages whose locale includes a modifier (LP: #1823778):
    - Make language labels include modifiers when present
    - Don't drop possible modifier when setting language

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Mon, 29 Apr 2019 13:23:29 +0100

Hello momcilo78, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-control-center into disco-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/1:3.32.1-1ubuntu4.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-disco to verification-done-disco. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-disco. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

Is there a reason this has not been targetted to and uploaded to the cosmic queue?

On 2019-05-08 23:09, Brian Murray wrote:
> Is there a reason this has not been targetted to and uploaded to the
> cosmic queue?

Talking for me:

Two months left; it's a settings glitch in the UI which can be worked around, and possible users who wanted to set one of the missing languages can be assumed to have either found a way or given up.

I installed gnome-control-center 1:3.32.1-1ubuntu4.1 from disco-proposed and verified the test case.

Could you add the workaround to the bug description just in case anyone on Cosmic stumbles upon this?

Hello momcilo78, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-control-center into bionic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/1:3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.4 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from verification-needed-bionic to verification-done-bionic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-bionic. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

On 2019-05-09 01:08, Brian Murray wrote:
> Could you add the workaround to the bug description just in case
> anyone on Cosmic stumbles upon this?

Done.

I installed gnome-control-center 1:3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.4 from bionic-proposed and verified the test case.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-control-center - 1:3.32.1-1ubuntu4.1

---------------
gnome-control-center (1:3.32.1-1ubuntu4.1) disco; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/52_region_language.patch:
    Fix languages whose locale includes a modifier (LP: #1823778):
    - Make language labels include modifiers when present
    - Don't drop possible modifier when setting language

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Mon, 29 Apr 2019 14:35:40 +0100

The verification of the Stable Release Update for gnome-control-center has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-control-center - 1:3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.4

---------------
gnome-control-center (1:3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.4) bionic; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/ubuntu-region-langpack-install.patch:
    - Dropped, which makes Serbian language items show up as selectable
      in Region & Language (LP: #1823778).
  * debian/patches/52_region_language.patch:
    - Prevent that the modifier part is dropped when a language
      represented by a locale with modifier is set (LP: #1823778).

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Sat, 13 Apr 2019 03:05:00 +0200