The installer language defaults to that of the machine locale. This is not always the desired language. I have spotted a similar report which was summarily dismissed as "Not a bug". For the reasons given below, I feel this was an inappropriate dismissal. As a newbie I am unsure whether it is even possible to have the original report re-opened so I have simply filed a new one. My apologies if this offends. In my case, I am located in Sweden with a Swedish sourced Family PC, together with installed Swedish default OS. Even though I am the administrator, I am unable to speak Swedish. I doubt I am the only migrant unable to adequately communicate in a local language. Just about every other software package, both open and proprietary, acknowledges that the installing operator may not comprehend the local language and therefore offers the option of switching the language to an easily understood alternative. Once installed there is no problem because each user is capable of selecting their own interface language. In a user environment, technical solutions viz "reset or edit Registry Key %xx(a).user/.???" can't and doesn't work. Simplicity viz "select installer language" is the order of the day. I will understand if this is considered a feature as opposed to a fault, but it will potentially deter new users. I doubt that is considered one of the prime objectives of the foundation.
The installer defaults to *user* locale. It can be easily switched for the Administrator account.
I must be really dumb. For me the installer just launches in Swedish with no provision to select an alternate language. Even though the system locale is set to Swedish I have actually changed everything I can on the administrator account to English but I still get a Swedish installer. Could you possibly give me a clue as to how the easy language switch is made? In reply to comment #1) > The installer defaults to *user* locale. It can be easily switched for the > Administrator account.
It is not possible to put language selector into the MSI, because its language it determined by the time the first dialog is displayed. We can think about setup.exe + MSI or something like that.
Strange. How did Piriform (httP://www.piriform.com) got the MSI package (e.g. CCleaner) working that way? When choosing another language, the window disappears and pop up with the chosen language. Why should this not working for LibreOffice (@Andras)?
They use NSIS installer.
I came to this thread when I tried to install Libri Office and found there was no language option to allow the installation in English. I downloaded the installation program from an English language website because I wanted it in English. I now find myself outside of the Libri Office forum and in the Bugzilla forum, so I'm guessing the Bug (or some intentional design aspect) of this thread has to do with the installer program. If anyone is interested in user friendly installation programs, one of my favorites is Malwarebytes. Also, as I recall, Open Office offers an installation program with EN or DE or whatever other language in the .exe file itself. It makes sense to allow the user to select the language he or she needs. The problem put me off from installing Libri Office.
I don't know whether it makes sense to warm this up, but Urmas seems to be wrong about the installer using the user locale. In fact I'm not sure it uses any locale at all: * I am in Austria (where the local language is German in case you don't know) * I have an English Windows 10 install * My user account is English as well * I don't have any German localization package or anything installed * The only German thing on this machine are the settings for number and date formats (Control Panel/Region) And yet the installer opens in German.
(In reply to Peter Feichtinger from comment #7) > I don't know whether it makes sense to warm this up, but Urmas seems to be > wrong about the installer using the user locale. In fact I'm not sure it > uses any locale at all: > * I am in Austria (where the local language is German in case you don't > know) > * I have an English Windows 10 install > * My user account is English as well > * I don't have any German localization package or anything installed > * The only German thing on this machine are the settings for number and > date formats (Control Panel/Region) > And yet the installer opens in German. Peter You appear to be confirming that there is a locale being detected as you're getting German and I'm getting Swedish. I imagine you bought your machine from a local OEM who pre-installed windows with a registry entry somewhere, set to German - as no doubt my local OEM would have set Swedish. As The Document Foundation is actually a German entity it would be more understandable that German has popped up as a default if a registry value was not being accessed, but Swedish - how could that work without some locale setting somewhere being referenced?
(In reply to Peter Feichtinger from comment #7) What is the following Registry value on your system? HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International
*** Bug 116176 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
@auntie.spam@yahoo.com I was also put off by this. @Peter Feichtinger: I have the exact same setup as you and @Urmas solved it! When I looked at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International , I saw that there are German values there, one of the keys is even named "Locale", which is very strange. I then realized that these registry settings are for number and date formats! Then in the control panel (Region window), when I changed the option from German to "Match Windows displayed language (recommended)", it switched to English (US) in the registry at that location. After that, the LibreOffice installer showed in English! And then if you want to continue using the number and date formats as before, just click "Additional settings..." in the control panel and change manually to custom values, but keep English as the selected option above. It will work that way. @Urmas: This doesn't look like the correct registry location for the installer to read. System language and system locale are ignored, and the installer only reads the number and date format, which doesn't make sense.
The UI language of the installer is defined by ProductLanguage property [1]. It automatically selects the built-in language transform. The command line to run LO MSI installer in any supported language is > msiexec /i LibreOffice_X.Y.Z_Win_x64.msi ProductLanguage=1033 where 1033 is for en-US; the value is decimal LCID number [2]. Note that the [MS-LCID] document lists the IDs in hexadecimal, e.g. 0x0409 for en-US. It should be noted that msiexec sets this value itself if it's 0, and it's msiexec which reads HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International values, however that could be counter-intuitive. It's interesting if we can change this value dynamically in the installer to change UI language dynamically - which, if possible, would allow to add the "Choose installer language" page in the beginning. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/Msi/productlanguage [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-lcid/a9eac961-e77d-41a6-90a5-ce1a8b0cdb9c
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #12) > It's interesting if we can change this value dynamically in the installer to > change UI language dynamically - which, if possible, would allow to add the > "Choose installer language" page in the beginning. Apparently it doesn't help to change the property at installer run-time. Obviously, the localization transforms are chosen at installation start time (either implicitly using regional settings, or from passed ProductLanguage, or explicitly by mentioning e.g. TRANSFORMS=:1084), and not re-applied later.
I have a similar problems when installers default to the regional settings instead of the default system language. I am located in Germany and of course have German date and currency settings but my system language is English as well as most of my programs. A user running a system with a certain system language can most probably understand that language. In contrast to that the regional settings are needed to display date and time, currency and maybe other metrics according to the local country. That said installers should 1. have a user selectable installer language in the GUI 2. if this is not available the installer should default to the system language and not to the regional settings.
(In reply to PeterK from comment #14) Your second point is not something that could be addressed at our level: that's how the Windows installer service works, and not configurable in individual MSI packages. That said: while your idea about user understanding system language might look reasonable, but the practice shows that there are lots of cases when it's not like that. We have quite a lot of questions "how to run installer in a language other than that of OS", because people work somewhere with pre-installed OS, or even regionally unable to obtain a differently localized Windows (yes, that happens even today). And *supposedly* Microsoft might had chosen to depend on that regional setting just because of that fact, that you can set it to anything (and possibly fine-tune manually to fake German date settings in English locale), but not always free to choose OS language.
By the way, there are much less UI localizations available for Windows, than locales; and e.g. for Scottish Gaelic, using the OS language by default, would not allow users to have LibreOffice installer shown in their language (see e.g. bug 124791).
*** Bug 128117 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
FTR: a reference with descriptions of different "locales" (system/user/input) and UI language in Windows: https://superuser.com/questions/503091