Item1926: To make the page display utf characters: LANG should use $Foswiki::cfg{Site}{Locale} if set

I am working on an international language application that must use utf-8. To my surprise Foswiki "just works" with utf8 (displaying characters), but only when I set %LANG% to $Foswiki::cfg{Site}{Locale}.

%LANG% is used in templates to set the HTML "lang" property. Unfortunately, this is not documented, so some plugin authors also use LANG (set to it or Deutsch).

Now I set it this way (in Main.SitePreferences):

• Set LANG = en_US.utf8

but of course the templates should pick up the value set in $Foswiki::cfg{Site}{Locale}.

-- ArthurClemens - 16 Aug 2009

What happens if %LANG% is not set to $Foswiki::cfg{Site}{Locale} ? How does it break?

-- MichaelTempest - 27 Jun 2010

I have not seen anything break, but assuming that a LANG setting is needed for utf8, LANG should not be used in a different way. So for now it may be just documentation.

-- ArthurClemens - 15 Aug 2010

Great - setting state back to confirmed.

-- MichaelTempest - 19 Aug 2010

Added VarLANG topic.

-- ArthurClemens - 19 Aug 2010