Re: texinfo-7.2.90 on OpenBSD

> Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:25:10 +0100
> From: Patrice Dumas <[email protected]>
> Cc: Gavin Smith <[email protected]>, [email protected]
> 
>      On OpenBSD, the only useful value for the category is LC_CTYPE.  It sets
>      the locale used for character encoding, character classification, and
>      case conversion.  For compatibility with natural language support in
>      packages(7), all other categories -- LC_COLLATE, LC_MESSAGES,
>      LC_MONETARY, LC_NUMERIC, and LC_TIME -- can be set and retrieved, too,
>      but their values are ignored by the OpenBSD C library.  A category of
>      LC_ALL sets the entire locale generically, which is strongly discouraged
>      for security reasons in portable programs.
> 
> So, unless I misinterpret this, it seems that LC_CTYPE should be used
> instead of LC_MESSAGES on that platform.
> 
> I tested, and indeed it worked to switch to a locale different from 'C'.
> "Cannot switch to a locale compatible with document strings
> translations" does not appear anymore, however, the strings are still
> not translated.
> 
> I do not like the idea to use LC_CTYPE, but maybe others have other
> ideas.
> 
> My feeling is that it works in C, because we do it a bit differently,
> like:
> 
>       setenv_status = setenv ("LC_ALL", "en_US.UTF-8", 1)
>                       || setenv ("LANG", "en_US.UTF-8", 1);
>       locale = setlocale (LC_MESSAGES, "");

I don't know if it's relevant, but MS-Windows' setlocale also doesn't
support LC_MESSAGES.