1387860 - Print (again) full 4-digit year in header line

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Printing: Setup, defect, P3)

Description

[Thomas Stein]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0
Build ID: 20170628075643

Steps to reproduce:

I specified in print header line "&D"
Parameter &D is replaced by 2-digit year YY instead of 4-digit year YYYY.

OS customization (WinOS) is YYYY.
So if Firefox intends to use this format its a bug.

In previous versions (before v53) the 4 year was displayed correctly.

See this thread for further information:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3030451



Actual results:

See above


Expected results:

Display correctly 4-digit year for &D in print header line

Comment 1

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Hi Thomas, thank you for reporting the bug!

I may be an engineer responsive for the change in question. I'm sorry for causing the trouble!

First of all, I noticed that you're using Firefox 54. There has been a lot of improvements since 54 has been completed. Can you check if the same problem is still present in the Nightly?

If it is, Can you please let me know what is your Operating System Regional Preferences language of choice, and what is the language of your Firefox?

Thank you!

Comment 2

[Thomas Stein]

Hello Zibi,
thank you for your feedback.

Meanwhile I downloaded FF v55 and tried it out (on english 64bit Windows 7).
And yes the year is now 4-digits.
But the overall date+time format is still wrong.

Parameter &D in header line shows now: 8/9/2017 11:12 AM

Since I am currently working in Germany/Europe I defined the regional settings accordingly.
See the following snapshot of my Regional Preferences:

http://www.picfront.org/d/9B9e

As you can see the preferred Date format is dd.MM.yyyy
and the time format HH:mm in 24h (!) way.
I marked the formats I want to see in FF header line with red arrow.

I don't know where Firefox retrieves its specific format but its completely wrong.

I suggest to make the date + time format independent from OS (e.g. by letting user customize it in about:preferences).

Thank you
Thomas

Comment 3

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Hi Thomas,

The way we handle that is that, for quite complex reasons explained in detail in bug 1366134, we only take your OS's regional preferences if your browser language matches your regional preferences language.

In other words, if your regional preferences are German, German Firefox would pick up the date format from your OS.
If you use German Firefox, then I believe that starting from Firefox 56 that's what will happen.

If you use other locale for your Firefox, then we added a preference that allows you to force Firefox to use your OS regional preferences irrelevant of the language match.

It doesn't have the Preferences UI yet (bug 1379910), but you can go to about:config and find key "intl.regional_prefs.use_os_locales" and switch it to true.

That's all in Firefox 56 and later, so I'm afraid it won't work in 55.

If you get a chance to check in 56, please let me know if either solution works for you.

Comment 4

[Thomas Stein]

Hi Zibi,
as I understand you the "intl.regional_prefs.use_os_locales" workaround already works in v55.

I tried to find this entry in about:config v55 of Firefox but without success.

Are you sure that it exists?

Comment 5

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

> as I understand you the "intl.regional_prefs.use_os_locales" workaround already works in v55.

No, both solutions were added only in 56.

Comment 7

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Thomas, can you give me an update on if this changed in 56 (or beta 57)?

Comment 8

[Thomas Stein]

Hi Zibi,
yes in v56 its now a 4-digit year.

However the date format (mm/dd/yyyy) is still not what I want (dd.MM.yyyy = european style).

Can this be fixed as well?

Yes, in Windows 7 -->Control Panel-->I already specified (since years) dd.MM.yyyy as default date format.


So Firefox should either take the date format from environment or let the user customize it in Firefox

Comment 9

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

> So Firefox should either take the date format from environment or let the user customize it in Firefox

Firefox should take it from the environment! Let me verify the STR, so I can debug it:

1) You're on Windows 7, your Regional Preferences locale is ???
2) You manually (?) customized your short/long date format to "dd.MM.yyyy"
2) You're on Firefox 56 in locale ???
3) You have set the intl.regional_prefs.use_os_locales to true
4) You click Bookmarks->Show All Bookmarks and the "Most Recent Visit" date format is "mm/dd/yyyy" while it should be "dd.MM.yyyy"

can you fill the blanks for me with the STR?

Thank you!

Comment 10

[Thomas Stein]

Thats interesting.

When starting answering your questions I found out that intl.regional_prefs.use_os_locales was set to false.
After switching to true as suggested everything seems to be working now.

Great! 

I have never read about this parameter before.
It should be mentioned wherever the locale settings are discussind in manual.
Moreover the default value should be set to false

Thanks for now.

Comment 11

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

There's a bug filed to add it an option to preferences (bug 1379910).

Marking this bug as fixed.