409832 - JavaScript function toLocaleFormat does not provide localized names in Mac Os X

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 818634

(Core :: JavaScript Engine, defect)

Description

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Example: evaluate in the error console 
alert(new Date().toLocaleFormat("%A %d %B %Y"));

On Mac Os X (Italian) you will see "Wednesday 26 December 2007", on Windows XP sp2 (Italian) "Mercoledì 26 Dicembre 2007".

Verified with 3.0b3pre (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; it; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2007122504 Minefield/3.0b3pre) but also with Firefox 2.0.0.x, both on Tiger and Leopard.

This a problem that involves also the localization process, since this function is used in the Download manager.
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/toolkit/mozapps/downloads/content/downloads.js#939

Comment 1

[Underpass]

Tried in Linux (Debian Testing) and the problem doesn't show up.
Verified with 3.0bpre [Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2007122804 Minefield/3.0b3pre] and the 2.0.0.x version on the same operating system.

Comment 2

[Marek Stępień [:marcoos, inactive]]

I can also confirm this with Polish Mac OS X 10.5 and Firefox 3.0b2.

Comment 3

[Marek Stępień [:marcoos, inactive]]

Also, "new Date().toLocaleString()" results:

Safari: 30 grudnia 2007 17:04:39 GMT+01:00
Fx 3 b2: Sun Dec 30 17:05:00 2007

Comment 4

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Attachment: Screenshot of the download manager

A screenshot of the download manager in Firefox 3prebeta3 showing why this bug is a major problem from a localizer's point of view.

Comment 5

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

nominating to get this on the radar.

Comment 6

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

Gavin nicely pointed out this is probably a dupe of bug 368838. Francesco, can you set your LANG environment variable and see if it fixes this? If it does, then this is a dupe of 368838.

Comment 7

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

> Gavin nicely pointed out this is probably a dupe of bug 368838. Francesco, can
> you set your LANG environment variable and see if it fixes this?

Thanks Bob, you (and Gavin) were right: If I open a terminal window (LANG is automatically set to it_IT.UTF-8) and start Firefox from command line, dates are localized in Italian (even if with some econding problems since accented letters are not correctly displayed).

Should I mark this bug as duplicate of 368838?

Comment 8

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

Francesco, thanks! I'll take care of it.

Comment 9

[Jesse Ruderman]

Comments in bug 368838 indicate that it is specifically about Number methods, not Date methods of the same name.

Comment 10

[Stefan Plewako [:stef]]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toLocaleFormat suggests not to use toLocaleFormat() and to use toLocaleString()/Intl.DateTimeFormat() instead.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toLocaleString
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/DateTimeFormat

new Date().toLocaleString("en-US"): 11/18/2014, 9:56:40 AM
new Date().toLocaleDateString(): 18.11.2014, 09:56:47
new Date().toLocaleDateString("pl"): 18.11.2014, 09:57:11
new Date().toLocaleString("pl",{weekday:"long",year:"numeric",month:"long",day:"numeric"}): wtorek, 18 listopada 2014
new Intl.DateTimeFormat().format(new Date()): 18.11.2014
new Intl.DateTimeFormat("en").format(new Date()): 11/18/2014

Wontfix as an effect of bug 769871?

Comment 11

[Jesse Ruderman]

Having it differ between Windows and Mac is odd, even if there's also a better API available.

That said, could we remove support for this non-standard API?

Comment 12

[Stefan Plewako [:stef]]

Another similar bug about toLocaleFormat: bug 476419

Comment 14

[André Bargull [:anba]]

toLocaleFormat was removed in bug 818634.