302471 - Thunderbird won't set date format to style #1

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Max Barry]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050725 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050725 Firefox/1.0.6

As per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Change_the_Date_Format, by
editing user.js you can choose one of five formats for Thunderbird to display dates:

Value     Example Date
0    10:23 AM
1    Friday, December 31 2003 10:23 AM
2    12/31/1999 10:23 AM
3    12/1999 10:23 AM
4    Fri 10:23 AM

I can get Thunderbird to display dates in the other four formats just fine, but
it will not display #1. Setting this...

user_pref("mail.ui.display.dateformat.default", 1);

... is completely ignored: Thunderbird simply keeps using the same date format
it was previously set to (i.e. one of the other 4).

This also happens if I try to set the date format for .thisweek and .today. All
formats work as advertised except for #1.

This is a problem because #1 is the only format that explicitly states the
month. I deal with people from many countries and a date format like "01/02/05"
(which is included in my replies) is ambiguous: to some people it's January 2nd
while to others it's February 1st.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Edit user.js
2. Start Thunderbird
3. Check date format in message list

Actual Results:  
If the date format was set to "1", it doesn't change.

Expected Results:  
Display dates in the appropriate format.

My system is running Gentoo Linux.

My locale:
$ locale
LANG=en_US
LC_CTYPE="en_US"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US"
LC_TIME=en_GB
LC_COLLATE="en_US"
LC_MONETARY="en_US"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US"
LC_PAPER="en_US"
LC_NAME="en_US"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US"
LC_ALL=

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I can get Thunderbird to display dates in the other four formats just fine,
> but it will not display #1. Setting this...
> 
> user_pref("mail.ui.display.dateformat.default", 1);
> 
> ... is completely ignored: Thunderbird simply keeps using the same date
> format it was previously set to (i.e. one of the other 4).

This is a little vague; you're claiming that the previous setting is somehow remembered?  I'm not seeing that; instead, under Linux (Ubuntu 6.06/Gnome) I'm seeing '1' show the date in the same format as '2'.

I think you may be ignoring information from that page, or perhaps the page has been updated since you looked last.  '1' and '2' mean "system long date" and "system short date" respectively, and these two values are both asterisked with a note: "Some operating systems have only one date format. On these systems, the values 1 and 2 produce the same result."  Which is what I see.

I think what you really need to do is change the systemwide date format.  This appears to be more complicated under Linux than under Windows; you need to redefine LC_TIME in order to get the nonnumeric representation of Month.  I'm looking at this page:

  <http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/UserInfo/Resources/Hardware/IBMp690/IBM/usr/share/man/info/en_US/a_doc_lib/files/aixfiles/LC_TIME.htm>
  <http://link.toolbot.com/uiuc.edu/56734>
but there may be better documentation somewhere, or a program that will set it up more easily.

Comment 2

[Max Barry]

Thanks for the reply. You're absolutely right (and my original post is wrong); "1" is displaying as "2", not ignored. Which, as you say, probably means there's no system-wide long date format.