texi2dvi not passing locale to texindex

Vincent Belaïche <[email protected]> Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:02:37 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.tex.texinfo.bugs
Message-ID	<AMBP194MB26919F6A27CE74E3F3A866AD84202@AMBP194MB2691.EURP194.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

This is a continuation of report:

https://tug.org/pipermail/latexrefman/2026q1/000983.html

To summarize the point: it would be great if texi2pdf / texi2dvi would
autonomously pass the correct locale to AWK texindex script based on
@documentlanguage + @documentencoding statements.

Please note that I came accross one more time on this issue, and I was
suggested to report it to you, see here:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-04/msg00573.html

I attached a patch that fixes the problem for me.

Please note that IMHO changing sh to bash would not harm anybody and
would make that sort of fix quite easier.

Please note that looking at only over the 64 first lines is
arbitrary. The objective is not to degrade too much the compile time.

Please note that stopping after the first match is to avoid silently the
case were there are several @documentlanguage (or @documentencoding)
statements. I am not sure was Texinfo behaviour is, but I assume that it
should consider only the first one and emit a warning/error on the
subsequent ones.

  Vincent.

patch 2.diff (application/octet-stream, 1.9 KB)

diff --git a/util/texi2dvi b/util/texi2dvi
index ac4a7db6ef..036f149b26 100755
--- a/util/texi2dvi
+++ b/util/texi2dvi
@@ -55,6 +55,8 @@ textra=         # Extra TeX commands to insert in the input file.
 txiprereq=19990129 # minimum texinfo.tex version with macro expansion
 verb=false      # true for verbose mode
 translate_file= # name of charset translation file
+texindexlocale_set=false # Set LC_ALL according to @documentlanguage and @documentencoding.
+
 
 # We have to initialize IFS to space tab newline since we save and
 # restore IFS and apparently POSIX allows stupid/broken behavior with
@@ -354,8 +356,28 @@ report ()
 run ()
 {
   verbose "Running $@"
-  "$@" 2>&5 1>&2 \
-  || error 1 "$1 failed"
+  case "$1" in
+    *=*)
+    (
+      again=true;
+      while $again; do
+	export "$1"
+	shift
+	case "$1" in
+	  *=*) ;;
+	  *)
+	  again=false;
+	  "$@" 2>&5 1>&2 \
+	    || error 1 "$1 failed"
+	  ;;
+	esac
+      done
+    )
+    ;;
+    *)
+    "$@" 2>&5 1>&2 \
+      || error 1 "$1 failed"
+  esac
 }
 
 
@@ -969,7 +991,21 @@ run_index ()
       ;;
 
     texinfo)
-      run $TEXINDEX $index_files
+      if $texindexlocale_set; then :; else
+	_document_encoding=`$SED  -ne 's/^[[:blank:]]*@documentencoding[[:blank:]]\+\([-A-Z0-9a-z]\+\).*$/\1/p' -e '/^[[:blank:]]*@documentencoding[[:blank:]]/q' -e '64q' $command_line_filename`
+	_document_language=`$SED  -ne 's/^[[:blank:]]*@documentlanguage[[:blank:]]\+\([_A-Z0-9a-z]\+\).*$/\1/p' -e '/^[[:blank:]]*@documentlanguage[[:blank:]]/q' -e '64q' $command_line_filename`
+	if [ -z "$_document_encoding" ]; then
+	  TEXINDEXLOCALE=''
+	else
+	  if [ -z "$_document_language" ]; then
+	    TEXINDEXLOCALE="LC_ALL=C.$_document_encoding "
+	  else
+	    TEXINDEXLOCALE="LC_ALL=$_document_language.$_document_encoding "
+	  fi
+	fi
+	texindexlocale_set=true;
+      fi
+      run $TEXINDEXLOCALE$TEXINDEX $index_files
       ;;
   esac
 }