Technical data

Setting System Time
6.7 Choosing Languages, and Date and Time Formats
Later, users can override the system defaults set up by the system manager and
select their own date and time formats.
Steps to Change Languages, and Dates and Times
For languages other than English or date/time formats other than the defaults,
you must complete these steps.
Note
Compaq recommends that you include these steps within the command
procedure SYS$MANAGER:SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM.
1. Define the logical name SYS$LANGUAGES (plural) to specify the list of
languages the users on your system might want to use. (If the language is
English, skip this step.)
2. Invoke the command procedure SYS$MANAGER:LIB$DT_STARTUP.COM,
which:
• Defines output formats you can use to customize the display of dates and
times
• Loads support for languages other than English that you define with the
SYS$LANGUAGES logical
3. Define date and time formats for the system using either:
• User-defined formats
• Predefined formats
6.7.1 Specifying Languages Other Than English
Note
Help/Message language variants might become available in a future
release of OpenVMS or on a per-country basis.
You use the SYS$LANGUAGES (plural) logical to define a list of languages other
than English. (From this list, users can later select a language to be displayed on
their processes, as explained in Section 6.7.4.)
Because English is the default language and must therefore always be available,
English spellings are not taken from logical name translations; rather, they are
looked up in an internal table.
For example, to specify the French, German, and Italian languages, you must
define SYS$LANGUAGES:
$ DEFINE SYS$LANGUAGES FRENCH, GERMAN, ITALIAN
To add another language, for example, FINNISH, you must add FINNISH to the
definition of SYS$LANGUAGES and execute the command procedure again.
6–18 Setting System Time