how do you set the locale in FC4?

[Tim]

Tim:
>>> Previously I've set one of my FC4 boxes to the correct locale for me
>>> (en_AU, not the default en_US), but I cannot remember how I did that,
>>> nor find a way to do it now.  What's the trick?

Paul Howarth:
>> Edit /etc/sysconfig/i18n ?

Tim: 
> Too easy, and it works too!  ;-)  But I don't remember whether I did it
> that way before, it doesn't jog the memory.  And try as I might, during
> the last two installations, I couldn't find a way to install additional
> languages like prior versions did.
> 
> I spent ages apropos-ing locale and language.  There's a man file for
> setlocale that leads you up the garden path (there's no setlocale
> command).

Seems I spoke too soon.  It looks like /etc/sysconfig/i18n is only part
of the equation.  On one of my PCs it contains this:

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
SYSFONT="latarcyrheb-sun16"
SUPPORTED="en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en"

Yet, if I type "locale" into a CLI, as myself, I get the following back:

LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

But as root, or other users, I get en_US answers, thus:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

So there must be somewhere else that sets the locale, but I don't know
where for sure - I can see a ~/.dmrc file with a locale in it, but I
don't know if that's the be-all and end-all for individual user
settings.  It appears that /etc/sysconfig/i18n just sets the default.

If I open up the "Language" system settings Gnome thingy, I only have US
English to choose from; so I can't change it there.  The only other
place that I can find that gives me any way to pick a locale/language is
the GDM greeter screen, it doesn't change the content
of /etc/sysconfig/i18n, but it seems to change the .dmrc file (at
least).

Setting the locale is a basic requirement of a multi-national-capable
system, so why isn't it *properly* documented / available for tweaking?
There's more to it than just adjusting the spelling away from American
perversions, currency and date formats need doing in the local manner.

Fooling around with the pre-login options seems a very roundabout manner
of setting the locale for users, not to mention how do you set that if
you don't do a graphical login?  And I still don't see a way of setting
this per system, short of fiddling with an undocumented file in an /etc/
sub-directory.

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