Swiss Italian

We provide language and cultural support for Italian-speaking Switzerland.
 
 

Localization

To customize your system to recognize certain language and cultural conventions used in Swiss Italian, such as date and time formats, currency format, and sorting order, follow these steps:

• Select Desktop Customize Language from the Toolchest to invoke the ipanel (International Settings Control Panel).

  or

• Type ipanel at a shell prompt.

Country

• Click the left mouse button over the Country icon at the bottom of the ipanel, then select Suiza (Italiano) from the list of countries in the next window.

Language

• Click the left mouse button over the Language icon at the bottom of the ipanel, then select the language you wish to use from Language Selection window.

Keyboards

Your system has one of several possible keyboards. Although ipanel provides you with a default keyboard configuration, you should either confirm the default or select a different configuration.
 

• Click the left mouse button over the Keyboard icon at the bottom of the ipanel, then select the keyboard configuration you wish to use from Keyboard Selection window.

Timezone

• Click the left mouse button. over the Time Zone icon at the bottom of the ipanel, then select the timezone you wish to use from Timezone Selection window.

When you have made all your selections:

• Click either Set System button or Set Personal button.
• In the next window, ipanel confirms the new setting you've made.  Click Logout Now button to log out.
• Log in again with the same account so that these modifications can take effect in any new window.

Notes

The standard keyboard shipped with most Silicon Graphics systems can enter only ASCII characters by default. Configured as shipped, it does not allow users to enter or use non-ASCII characters needed for Swiss-Italian or other European languages.

The Swiss-Italian location makes it possible to use non-ASCII characters with most system tools. The US ASCII with Compose key keyboard layout is exactly like the default layout for the (101-key) US keyboard, except that the right Alt key (the key immediately to the right of the space bar) behaves as a Compose key, which makes it possible to enter many non-ASCII characters. See the compose(5) and composetable(5) man pages for more information about using the Compose key.

Many systems include a keyboard specially designed for Switzerland. If you have a Swiss keyboard, you can choose the Swiss-German keyboard from the Language Controls panel for German and the Swiss-French keyboard for French. This will make your keyboard generate the characters that appear on each key. This choice changes the default behavior of a few keys that generate characters that are not needed for Italian; either choice works equally well. Several of the keys near the C key have four or more symbols engraved on them. When you use the German-Swiss layout, those keys generate the characters with umlauts by default. When the French-Swiss layout is active, those keys generate the characters with accent grave or acute by default. Whatever the default, you can always generate the other character by pressing Shift.

If you are not certain which keyboard you have, first look at the Enter key. If your Enter key is rectangular, you have a US keyboard and should use the US ASCII with Compose key keyboard layout. If your Enter key is non-rectangular, you probably have a Swiss keyboard.

If your keyboard has a non-rectangular Enter key but selecting the one of the Swiss layouts does not make it work properly, it is possible that you have a national keyboard for some other country. You can try each of the keyboard layouts listed in the Language Controls panel until you find the one that matches your layout, or contact your sales and support office for assistance.

Support

For further assistance with language and cultural customization questions please contact your local Silicon Graphics representative.