100790 - No way of change date format of email messages

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[S A Jarrett-Sprague]

The default date format for mozilla is us ie. month, day, year. I am in the uk
and the format is day, month, year. I only found out that the date format was us
when I had dates like 9 19 2001 rather than the 19 9 2001 we in the UK would
expect. An internationalisation of mozilla is required.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Which dates are you referring to exactly?  Is this bug 98144?

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

I think reporter might mean the MM/DD/YYYY syntax visible in mail when you sort
it. The setting there is determined by the machines "locale".
Write "locale" to see current settings.

If you want to change the time setting from for instance en_US to en_GB add this
to your bashrc or something:

export LC_TIME="en_GB"

After next restart of Mozilla the date should be OK.
At least this Works For Me (Norway) when i do an export LC_TIME="no_NO"

Comment 3

[R.K.Aa.]

correction... "just in case.."

If you add it to .bashrc (actually using bash as your login shell) - the change
may not take place untill after you've logged in again. (Or otherwise have
rehashed the shell.) 
Untill then: just export the variable to the xterm you start moz from.

Comment 4

[R.K.Aa.]

I tested this:

export LC_TIME="en_GB"

The date format in both the pane listing as well as header displays the british
time format of dd/mm/yyyy after restarting moz with this new environment variable.
Resolving as WFM.

Comment 5

[S A Jarrett-Sprague]

Okay thanks for the advice to get the 'correct' date format. But this leaves me
with an issue. I have set up my linux box using Redhat 7.1 and I told it my
locale during installation. However, from looking at locale all my settings are
us. As I use KDE my desktop localisation is done from its control centre.
Shouldn't there be instructions with mozilla to check locale and give advice on
how to correct problems? 

Comment 6

[R.K.Aa.]

well.. Netscape 4.* also used locales to decide a users desired date format.
I guess it's considered inheritance. I do remember seeing it documented for NS4.
Perhaps a good idea to include in the mozilla release notes or even helpfile -
this issue does tend to pop up from.. time to time ;)

Comment 7

[R.K.Aa.]

For now I added this in my own ugly little Mozilla "FAQ"
http://home.c2i.net/dark/My_Mozilla_FAQ.html

Comment 8

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 145310 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 212070 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***