How to make KiCad use one language from command line (and not two)

Objective: Run KiCad and get the UI in English, no matters which language is selected in the OS (I’m talking about Linux, not Windows).

What I tried: LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 pcbnew
Where en_US.utf8 was determined running locale -a and looking for en_*

This almost works, but doesn’t always work. The GTK native dialogs sometimes remain in the global language, here is an example:

image

You can see the KiCad Print dialog using english and the GTK Print dialog using spanish (Also note: both dialogs has the exact same name Print, IMHO a very bad idea)

What is even more bizarre is that using: LC_ALL=C pcbnew works as expected.
The problem with this is that some Linux distros, like Arch (IMHO broken, C locale is a traditional UNIX locale for scripts trying to avoid localization details) doesn’t define this locale, so I can’t rely on this.

Why is KiCad (wxWidgets, GTK, etc.) doing this? I’m explicitly asking for a locale in the environment, but getting a mix of two locales. What’s wrong here?

And BTW, I think the KiCad menu to select the language is broken. If I try to select English it says it isn’t supported by the system, but en_US.utf8 is installed. I guess KiCad is assuming some fixed name, like en or en_UK, and not asking the system which locale is installed for the selected language, like I’m doing using locale -a.

How are you launching KiCad? if it is from a graphical menu then that might explain it as a *.desktop file can set/override locale.

from a terminal, what happens if you do: LC_ALL=C kicad

I’m running KiCad from the command line. As I explained: LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 pcbnew

If I use LC_ALL=C pcbnew it works. But, as I explained, the C locale isn’t always available. Arch Linux users reported it isn’t defined on Arch.

This is an oversimplification, the real thing is like this: Arch Linux defines C locale, but modern Linux systems switched to UTF-8 and defines C.UTF-8. Arch Linux doesn’t. The problem is that using plain C some tools fail (i.e. xdotool fails to compare UTF-8 text from the Windows titles) . So must use C.UTF-8. But as this isn’t available on all cases what we are trying to use is just some english locale.

Writing this I think we could also try:

  1. Run KiCad with C locale
  2. Run xdotool with en*.UTF* locale

BTW: The question remains: Why do I get 2 languages?

Potentially the two languages are shown because the translation to the non-english language is incomplete. The parts that are not translated will default to english.

Nope, running LC_ALL=es_AR.UTF-8 pcbnew shows all in spanish.

Running LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 pcbnew gives a mix

Running LC_ALL=C pcbnew gives all english (no translation at all)

wxWidget’s locale handling is separate from system locale handling. The native GTK print dialog you mention is not wxWidgets window and is likely playing by system rules. I’m guessing here but maybe it doesn’t recognize en_US.UTF-8 locale and defaults to system locale.

Hi @qu1ck !

You are right, this is a difference between what wxWidgets and GTK use and support.

Looking closer to the problem:

  1. wxWidgets takes LC_ALL/LANG as a mandatory value
  2. GTK looks for LANGUAGE as mandatory

For a wxWidgets application using:

LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 LANGUAGE=es pcbnew

Selects English … until it uses a native GTK dialog. A native GTK application using:

LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 LANGUAGE=es evolution

Selects Spanish. The trick is setting both:

LC_ALL=en_US.utf8 LANGUAGE=en pcbnew

This solves the problem.

1 Like

Some notes:

  1. LC_ALL=C seems to be the “magic” case where both disable translations
  2. The problem with my system was that GNOME defined LANGUAGE=“es_AR:es”

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