Removing Asian Language Support

kdb1 wrote:
Monolingual is fine for removing languages, it's removing the Architectures that has been known to cause problems.

Do you know what it does?

I'd like to take control of the situation and do it myself
rather than use someone else's program. Monolingual may be
fine for this, but I'd prefer to make do without it, thanks.

kdb1 wrote:
"Do you know what it does?"

Yes, the languages are called projects, so English would be en.lproj , and they are in pretty much every applications Resources folder, Monolingual will just go through and delete all the .lproj files that you ask it to, nothing else. You could either do it manually, which will take some time, or hope someone knows a good Terminal command, but all Monolingual is, is a Terminal command wrapped up in a nice GUI.

Hi again. I've just read that 'AsianLanguagesSupport' is a required package
for Leopard. I don't know if that's true. It's just something someone said
in a forum. I wonder if the kind people here can provide some information
that would corroborate or refute that. In particular, I'd be interested to
know under what circumstances this is installed:

com.apple.pkg.AsianLanguagesSupport

You can find out if you have it by typing this in a terminal window:

pkgutil --pkgs

If you do have it, it should appear in the list. Equally, you can look
for the presence of this file:

/Library/Receipts/boms/com.apple.pkg.AsianLanguagesSupport.bom

If Leopard came pre-installed on your system, you will likely
have the package. But I'd like to hear from anyone who
deselected the extra languages (as I did) and still has it.
And if anyone doesn't have it, I'd be pleased to hear from
them also.

Many thanks.

Tom Gewecke wrote:
"Asian language support" is not the localization files normally removed when people want to save space or when you install without the "language translations." It's the ability to read and write Chinese, Japanese, and Korean using the browser, email, and word processors. It consists of a number of fonts plus the input methods, and they are always installed automatically. I would recommend you leave this stuff alone, to avoid possible problems with updates or apps that may check to see if it is there.

Thanks. It's great to hear that. I don't mind this stuff being
there if it must be there. I want to keep my system neat and
tidy, but no more than necessary.

That still leaves the matter of having these items listed in font
menus. Some fonts that I probably won't be using much:

/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Braille Outline 6 Dot.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Braille Outline 8 Dot.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Braille Pinpoint 6 Dot.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Braille Pinpoint 8 Dot.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Braille.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/AquaKanaBold.otf
/System/Library/Fonts/AquaKanaRegular.otf
/System/Library/Fonts/Geeza Pro Bold.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/Geeza Pro.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/Geneva.dfont
/System/Library/Fonts/Thonburi.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/ThonburiBold.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/ヒラギノ明朝 ProN W3.otf
/System/Library/Fonts/ヒラギノ明朝 ProN W6.otf
/System/Library/Fonts//ヒラギノ角ゴ ProN W3.otf
/System/Library/Fonts/ヒラギノ角ゴ ProN W6.otf
/System/Library/Fonts/儷黑 Pro.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/华文细黑.ttf
/System/Library/Fonts/华文黑体.ttf

With regard to these, I noticed this
[http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307069]:

+Package: Essential System Software+
+Installed: Always (cannot be disabled)+
+Location: /System/Library/Fonts+

And yet the disable option in Font Book does seem
to make them disappear from menus, albeit only on
an account by account basis.

Tom Gewecke wrote:
Regarding fonts, see

http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

That's an excellent read. Thank you for mentioning it.

Topher Kessler wrote:
Unless there are asian language characters you'd like to view, the asian language support files will just sit there and be untouched. You can turn off the asian language support for each application by getting information on an app (right-click --> get info) and uncheck the languages you dont want to be supported in that application (down in the "Languages" section). Alternatively instead of unchecking you can click one and remove it with the "-" button. This will remove the selected localization for that application, and you can do that for every application you've got.

Despite many years of getinfoing I never noticed that 🙂

Thank you too, Topher.