Dear Editor,

I am brand new to Mac OS X (ver. 10.1.3) but very interested in saving all that wasted language space (200MB). Been with the Mac since '85 or so. My expertise level is minute.

After reading the posts about the "Remove foreign language files to save disk space" I am confused and hope that you may shed some light on this subject for me?!
I hope to remove all except the English and German language files. The shell script featured below leaves me wondering how to do this thing correct without blowing things up? I will place some ****questions**** at the lines that confuse me. I have "Terminal" and see the Shell menu choices. I'll also want to say that I have no idea what all the below MEANS!

[Editor's note: I have replaced the original method listed here with a much safer version. The "find" command line hack removes some Epson and Apple files that also end in ".lproj".]

If you plan on using your machine for only English (or only one of the other languages), you can safely remove the foreign language files (*.lproj) from your drive, freeing up over 200mb of space. "Since EBCDIC" posted a script in this MacFixit forum thread that does the trick.

Read the rest of the article for the how-to!
You need to create a very simple "shell script".
Open a terminal, make sure you're in your home directory
('cd" then return), ***I have done that in Terminal and noticed the change in the window**** and use your favorite editor ****here is the first confusion! Should I use another application or stay in "Terminal" to type the Pico nolproj???**** to create the following file.
Pico is the easiest edit to use, so if you're new to the terminal, try typing "pico nolproj" and then copying and pasting the following:

#!/bin/tcsh


sync
df
date
foreach language ( French Dutch Spanish Italian Swedish Portuguese )
find / -name $language.lproj -type d -exec rm -r -- {} ; -prune
end
date
df
sync
Save the file,
**** Save the file to where??? In what folder, or just the desktop???**** quit the editor, then type:
**** then type where in what application? since we quit Terminal or the editor???****

chmod +x nolproj
This makes the file executable. You can now run it by typing
**** type where to run it???****

sudo ~/nolproj
and entering your password.
****I imaging that the "chmod entry will result in a space where to type the password???****

The above script keeps all English files; if you want to keep a few, or a different one, just edit the language list and REMOVE those languages you want to KEEP. Anything in the list is DELETED.

Caution! Make sure you type the file exactly as shown! A simple little typo could delete all the files on your hard drive! Read the MacFixIt forum for a real-world example of how this could happen to you!

I take the warning about typing things exactly as shown very seriously, but I need just a little more information! I further hope that you can respond in good spirit to provide me with the most accurate info to save all of this space on my HDisk.

Thank you in advance,

Mike Weiland

If you are like me, and prefer to avoid command lines, the terminal app. & anything that smacks of programming, there is a much simpler way to go about this. Just download the freeware "monolingual", available from Version Tracker. It is very simple to use, & you can choose specifically which languages to delete.