Detect System Language?

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

Hi Folks,

do you have a clue on how to detect the system language on tiger?

The Comments about detecting the language here in the forum are mostly
for panther and are not working on tiger…

Thanks for your help!

Stefan

#2 
set language to user locale of (system info)
#3

user locale from system info shows the origin language, which has been chosen during the first installation.
The current system language selected in System Preferences > International you can get with

set SystemLanguage to do shell script "defaults read .GlobalPreferences AppleLanguages | cut -c 2-3"
#4

Hi Adam, Hi Stefan,

thanks a lot for your help! This has been the last peace of the puzzle…

Now everything is working perfect…

Best Regards,

Stefan

#5

Hi Stefan,

this didn’t work for me - I suspect you might have only one language enabled in your system?
at my system the defaults read results a list like this:
“(
de,
fr,
en,
ja,
es,
it,
nl,
…
)”

This modification of your script makes it work for me:

set SystemLanguage to do shell script "defaults read .GlobalPreferences AppleLanguages | grep -v '^(' | head -n1 | sed 's/[ ,]*//g'"

D.

#6

Hi Dominik,

hm, no, I have three languages enabled, in Terminal I get with “defaults read .GlobalPreferences AppleLanguages” the result: (en, de, it)
So the cut shell command takes only character 2 and 3.
Maybe its a question of system version (I use Tiger and the origin question was Tiger, too :wink: )

Edit: I just realized, there is an easier way in Tiger:

do shell script "defaults read .GlobalPreferences AppleCollationOrder"
#7

Interesting, none of these will reveal the language selected in the International menu. I have to get that this way:

set MAC to primary Ethernet address of (get system info)
set tid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ":"
set MAC to (text items of MAC)
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tid
set MAC to MAC as text

set L to paragraph -2 of (do shell script "defaults read /Users/bellac/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox." & MAC & " | grep -A 4 AppleCurrentAsciiInputSource")

And no doubt there’s a simple awk or sed way to extract the language itself.

#8

Only Dominik’s script parses the text properly on my Tiger machine and none of them give the correct result in the Jaguar one. The unparsed text in Tiger is:

. and in Jaguar:

The parsing code should ideally perform the equivalent of:

set SystemLanguage to do shell script "defaults read .GlobalPreferences AppleLanguages"

set astid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
set SystemLanguage to text item 1 of SystemLanguage
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid

set b to 1
repeat while (character b of SystemLanguage is in "(" & space & return)
	set b to b + 1
end repeat
set SystemLanguage to text b thru -1 of SystemLanguage

. at least until Leopard comes out. :wink:

#9

these different defaults-read-results with the same system version are very odd.
I have here on a G4 PowerBook and a G5 dual 2,5 with 10.4.8 the same results:

¢ Dominik’s script doesn’t work at all
¢ Adam’s HIToolbox script works only on the G5 (the PowerBook has no child “AppleCurrentAsciiInputSource”)
¢ Nigel’s script and my AppleCollationOrder and AppleLanguages | cut script work on all machines

#10

very strage … I also tried on 10.4.8 (G4 Powerbook) and my script worked here. Seems it sometimes outputs with and sometimes without line breaks - my output looks like Nigel’s.
Anyway - I agree - Stefan’s second attempt and Nigel’s solution seem to be the most reliable …

#11

What are you trying to accomplish? If you just need to load a localized resource, there are built-in ways to do that.

(And if not, ignore me.)

#12

On my machine, the AppleCollationOrder script returns “en” rather than “"en-GB"”. That’s not strictly accurate, though it’s probably near enough for most purposes! :slight_smile:

#13

Unless you need to be specific between US and UK English, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Internationalization Programming Topics: Language and Locale Descriptions

#14

Just to complicate matters English, there’s an en-CA as well.

#15

There’s also Australian English.

Edit: There are also multiple versions of other languages as well (e.g. French, Portuguese).

#16

Hi Folks,

thanks a lot for your effort! I will try and put Nigel´s code in my application - Jaguar will come sooner or later…

Best regards,

Stefan