[i18n] Change helpdb location w/o rebuilding system image

[wlbksy]

I'm working on generating an Simplified Chinese helpdb_zh_CN.jl.
But when I put it in the same location of helpdb.jl and change base\util.jl 's

helpdb = evalfile("$JULIA_HOME/../share/julia/helpdb.jl")

into

helpdb = evalfile("$JULIA_HOME/../share/julia/helpdb_zh_CN.jl")

then restart REPL ,type help(), it echoes

ERROR: could not open file D:\soft\julia\bin\/../share/julia/helpdb.jl

Maybe this path &name have been hard coded into sys.ji ?

Could it be alted so that users can set local locale?
If not, users have to rename their helpdb_what_ever_language.jl to helpdb.jl and replace the origin one.

[pao]

Yes, the things in base get stuffed into the system image. You can change that line, but you have to also make again.

However, i18n is a good argument for doing something different here.

[JeffBezanson]

I assume it should be changed to determine the file name at run time based on locale?

[pao]

That sounds like a viable option, as long as there is a fallback to _en.

[nolta]

@wlbksy Could you post the output of the following:

bytestring(ccall(:setlocale, Ptr{Uint8}, (Int32,Ptr{Uint8}), 0, C_NULL))

?

[wlbksy]

@nolta

on Ubuntu "zh_CN.UTF-8"

useful string "zh_CN"

on Win7

"LC_COLLATE=Chinese (Simplified)_People's Republic of China.936;LC_CTYPE=Chinese
 (Simplified)_People's Republic of China.936;LC_MONETARY=Chinese (Simplified)_Pe
ople's Republic of China.936;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=Chinese (Simplified)_People's
Republic of China.936"

useful string "936" . see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codepage

If we are going to use locale environment variable, we should write OS specific expr.

[edit to specific things]

[nolta]

I've added preliminary support for this. You just have to copy your version of helpdb.jl into $JULIA_HOME/../share/julia/zh_CN/ and then run:

julia> Base.locale("zh_CN")
"zh_CN"

julia> help(int)
...

[wlbksy]

I'll make a new Julia, and report back.

[nolta]

Note to self: looks like GetUserDefaultLocaleName is the windows function for BCP 47 locales.

[wlbksy]

@nolta
Your commit works.
But it would be better if we could refresh loaded helpdb cache each time we call Base.locale
(help_category_dict is a must,
help_category_list,help_module_dict,and help_function_dict is optional).

Since this works, I'll close #2499

[wlbksy]

Can we close this?

[ViralBShah]

The README needs to be updated with sphinx as a dependency.

[wlbksy]

I don't think it is a dependency for now.

As for what you have said, there's an issue for it. #2501

[ViralBShah]

Ok - I mixed up things. There was an issue on the debian julia-pkg-devel list about using sphinx. I am guessing that this is because the debian package uses sphinx as part of its build.