315368 - no way to set date format

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Leif Sandstede]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20051004 Firefox/1.0.7
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 1.0.7 (20051015)

system date format settings are not respected and there is no way to set it in thunderbird itself

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start Thunderbird
Actual Results:  
date format is MM/DD/YY

Expected Results:  
date format should be DD/MM/YYYY as set in KDE

Currently the date format in TB is MM/DD/YY.
I want it to be DD/MM/YY or DD/MM/YYYY and acording to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Date_display_format that setting is not even availible in user.js(and I realy should not have to set it there anyway).
It does not use the setting from KDE either and in TB itself the is no cofiguration window to even set the date format, at least none that I could find.
The ISO format would be OK too, but I realy hate the american date format.
Maybe the default should be changed to ISO format.

Changing LC_TIME locale does not do anything.
I am using Gentoo Linux.
I do not have userlocales compiled in, but that should not be the only way to set  things anyway. It should only be used to determine the default setting.

Comment 1

[Leif Sandstede]

Bugs:
253883
297924
236147
seem to be related.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Setting LC_TIME works fine over here, using 1.5rc1. Make sure the locale is set up also, in ubuntu I did "dpkg-reconfigure locales" after I set LC_TIME. 

Of those related bugs, only the last one is for linux.

Comment 3

[Leif Sandstede]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Of those related bugs, only the last one is for linux.
That makes it worse, does it not?
Anyway, bug 253883 seems to be nearly the same issue under windows.
Bug 236147 may be related, but I do not usually use those locales and I do not think that I even have support compiled in.
Bug 297924 is unrealted and may even be invalid, sorry about that, I just skimmed over it before.

The real issue is that there is no way at all for me to set the date format since changing the locale does not seem to work here.
TB should use my setting from KDE or provide a way to change the setting in itself.

There should be another way to do it.

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

As I said, setting LC_TIME works (for most people, including my self). If it doesn't work for you, there must be something with your install.

Comment 5

[Alex]

There should be the option to set this independently of the locale, for instance if your locale's date format is not to your liking. I find the en_GB format DD/MM/YYYY to be distasteful, and would much rather use the ISO format YYYY-MM-DD.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Is the LC_TIME locale you are trying to use available in the list displayed by "locale -a"? 

Comment 7

[Maurits]

Similar Bugs:

<i><a href="show_bug.cgi?id=236147">236147</a></i> Linux
<i><a href="show_bug.cgi?id=360018">360018</a></i> Mac OS X

Comment 8

[Ben]

This is an update for those running 32-bit versions of Thunderbird on Linux for AMD64 architectures. 

Currently I use the beta version of Thunderbird, which is a 32-bit application and it kept complaining that the en_DK.utf8 locale was not supported by the C locale and that it defaulted to the C locale. "locale -a" clearly showed that the locales returned by "locale" were available.

I was completely baffled, until I realised that it is a 32-bit application. On my Ubuntu installation, the 32-bit locales directory (/usr/lib32/locale) did not exist. The solution was very simple: create a symbolic link to the 64-bit locales directory, i.e.:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/locale /usr/lib32/locale

That's all! Hope this update is useful for others having the same problem.

Comment 9

[Martin]

I would really like to see an option in the preferences where this can be configured. Something like

Date format
                 _____________        yy: 2 digit year   yyyy: 4 digit year
   Date format: |_____________|       mm: 2 digit month  M: month name
                                      dd: 2 digit day    D: day name
    __
   |__| Write "today" instead of todays date
    __
   |__| Write "yesterday" instead of yesterdays date
    __
   |__| Write weekdays instead of dates for the past week


I would e.g. like to have dates formatted as dd/mm-yyyy (as I live in Denmark).

Comment 10

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Not a blocker, and IMO we don't need UI for this. Should just use the system settings - which is working for most people.

Comment 11

[Jason Oster (:Parasyte)]

The date format (at least for me) is pulled from the system locale. For example:

$ LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8" ./thunderbird

Displays dates in this format (US English):
11/09/2009 12:44 AM

and
$ LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8" ./thunderbird

Displays dates in this format (Great Britain English):
09/11/09 00:44

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12)
> Gecko/20051004 Firefox/1.0.7
> Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 1.0.7 (20051015)
> 
> Changing LC_TIME locale does not do anything.
> I am using Gentoo Linux.

WFM:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9.1.3pre) Gecko/20090817 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0b4pre

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

Comment 12

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

A date format UI would likely make a great extension as I'm sure other people would like this option as well but I don't think we'd build this into the core as the system date works best for most people.  marking this wontfix as I don't think we can accept this UI however comment 9 has some promise and should be made into an add-on.

Comment 13

[b.heidemann]

To make it work edit /etc/environment (e.g. sudo emacs /etc/environment) and add the following line to it:

LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"

Save the file, log out and log in again. You can check that the variable has been successfully set by opening a terminal and typing:

echo $LC_TIME

which should return:

en_GB.UTF-8

Now start Thunderbird again and hopefully all will be well. I know it is annoying to have to do this but maybe the bug should be better addressed by the creators of distributions, who fail to set LC_TIME as a default in /etc/environment.

Comment 14

[Brian Murrell]

I want to add my support for comment #9.  Typically, I don't know what date it is today, offhand.  I don't really care in fact.  I just want to know (for recent e-mails anyway) the relative day offset.  That is, I want to easily see which e-mails arrived yesterday and which e-mails arrived Monday of this week, etc.

Of course, beyond the current week, dates should fall back to fully specified.

Is that enough to change this bug from WONTFIX to something that will get fixed or should I add a new bug?