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R 2.1.0 GUI language

4 messages · Stephan Tolksdorf, Brian Ripley

Stephan Tolksdorf
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Hi

How do I set the language of the GUI? With R 2.1.0 it suddenly changed 
to German and I want it to stay English. I couldn't find any setting to 
change.

Regards,
   Stephan
Brian Ripley
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On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Stephan Tolksdorf wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Which OS is this?  PLEASE do read the posting guide.

This *is* documented in the `R Installation and Adminstration' Manual, 
section `Internationalization'.

If your OS is set to German, then why don't you expect R to follow?
If you don't want German menus, do you want German months (as has happened 
for many versions).

For Windows or Linux, to just change the language of messages, set 
environment variable LANGUAGE=en.  To set all aspects, set LC_ALL=en.  I 
don't know about MacOS X menus.

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Stephan Tolksdorf
    

    

      
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Thanks for your prompt reply.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Win XP, SP2 (German), which I forgot to mention despite heaving read the 
guide.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Looked in the wrong place (and the help isn't globally searchable).

            

      
      
      
    

        
I'd just like to have an option to change the language. English is my 
working language and the common denominator of my tool chain. German 
warning messages probably also wouldn't be much help to me when asking 
for help on this list.
By the way, I'd be quite afraid to suddenly see the German decimal comma 
  instead of point in my program output, but fortunately R isn't that 
localized.

            

      
      
      
    

        
LC_ALL doesn't seem to change the message language. LC_MESSAGES,
which is mentioned  in the installation and administration guide,
doesn't seem to exist in R 2.1.0 and isn't listed in the locales help.

I helped myself by putting
Sys.putenv("LANGUAGE"="EN");Sys.setlocale("LC_ALL","EN")
into etc/Rprofile. Don't know if this is the default way to go.

Stephan

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Brian Ripley
    

    

      
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On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Stephan Tolksdorf wrote:

        
[...]

            

      
      
      
    

        
Right: it cannot be set inside R.  For as the manual says:

   Note that you should not expect to be able to change the language
   once R is running.

But it can be set as an environment variable outside R, as described in 
the rw-FAQ.  Setting either LC_MESSAGES or LC_ALL=de on the command line 
works for me.