399605 - Dates in Event/Invite attendees use OS regional settings wording and date format instead of those of Calendar language settings

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Internal Components, defect)

Description

[Emerson Prado]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; pt-BR; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; pt-BR; rv:1.8.1.8pre) Gecko/20071011 Sunbird/0.7

Hi. If you are editing an event and click on "Invite atendees", the dates shown in the related window are shown in the OS regional settings format, instead of the Calendar language. I use Calendar pt-BR on top of Win2k en-US at work, and the dates in this window come in en-US.
Thanks,
Emerson

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open event
2.Click on "Invite atendees"
Actual Results:  
Dates are shown following OS regional settings

Expected Results:  
Dates should follow the user-chosen language for Calendar

Comment 1

[Omar Bajraszewski]

IMO it's a duplicate of bug 337191.

Comment 2

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

No duplicate because different issue (date format vs. time value).

The date and time format is retrieved from OS on purpose. No valid bug in my opinion.

Comment 3

[Emerson Prado]

Stefan,
Being picky, which is the purpose of using OS language settings in this particular window, while all the rest seems to obey the Calendar chosen language?
IMHO, when the user chooses the desired language in Calendar, he'd like everything to show in this language. At least it's my case.
BTW, I screwed up in the bug description. Not only the date format follows OS regional settings. The wording also does. That is, no translation in the dates in this window. Maybe I have to edit the description or open another bug...
Thanks

Comment 4

[Emerson Prado]

This seems quite close to Bug 317607. Pls see Bug 317607 Comment #2 for a good wording of what I mean. My view is that it's not a good idea to have English wording in a Portuguese application. There are reasons a user may need the OS and the application in different languages, ending up with mixed wording inside Calendar.
Best regards

Comment 5

[Fabi]

I can confirm this, and I think this is a serious issue! There are more examples of this behavior: 

- In the today pane dates are given in OS language. 

- In all calendar views the "mouse-over" pop-up is in OS language while the calendar itself is in lightning language! Especially this behavior is very confusing! 

I think this is *definetly* a bug, and worth looking into! 

Comment 6

[Emerson Prado]

I finally edited the title to better description of the issue. Both the wording and the date format aren't following Calendar language settings.
Best regards

Comment 7

[ovidiu]

I agree with this, though I would have described it more general. 

Cause it's not attendees where I saw this. It is also the case with options:
-I use lightning 0.8 in *eng*, os (is eng but) shows *ro* for date
-options/lightning//general tab: Date text format [4 iunie 2008] (ro /today)
-options ..views tab is in eng (mo tu we ..), cal views/miniday etc are eng
-mouse over vs headers, just like comment 5 ..
+ indeed in attendees is ro (os) not eng (lt)

This should just be consistent. 

So I consider this a bug (unexpected or random behavior, user confusion etc) and would change this for a more general 
"Inconsistent date language across calendar, os vs calendar settings"

(I do not plead for os or lt, as I may have the opposite idea on this than the reporter, I maybe like to see the names, dates etc in os, cause my os allows eng with dates in ro for those local sett, maybe off topic ..IMHO remains debatable if this should change to lt or just be a pref ..)

Comment 8

[ovidiu]

may be of interest bug 199037 (dep/block?) which deals with long format date.

I think this only appears on long format date! (all 3 examples above are about long format, not able to find other lang issues ..)which is os and not lt ..


+(not of much use, but maybe ..)
if this resembles bug 227038 and thus bug 185394, (in name, cause it references other areas in UI) I wonder if those fixed where escaping this long format ..?
[If dupe it for those would mean reopen them? (could it be a regression or missing somewhere?) ]

Comment 9

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Please don't reopen bugs that have been fixed years ago for the Mozilla Calendar extension (abandoned since 2005).

Comment 10

[ovidiu]

(In reply to comment #9)
was never actually thinking of ;) 
just pointing to possible relation ..

Comment 11

[Fabi]

I found out that this bug doesn't apply when using the latest nightly for the comm-central build. 

Everything is displayed in the Lightning language when using Thunderbird 3.0a2 and the latest nightly. 

Just now, the date format is "US-Style" and cannot be customized. Probably related to using the OS-setting or not.

Comment 12

[Wim]

I think this problem is still alive in Sunbird.
When i use the latest Dutch (nl)Sunbird from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/sunbird/nightly/latest-comm-central-sunbird-l10n/ and install it on my Dutch OS, the dateformat in dayview and the titlebar are in Dutch (probably OS specific).
When I install the Frisian (fy-NL) version (there is no Frisian WindowsOS available) the dateformat is set to en-US (not even Dutch strangely enough).

I have searched through the bugs and found this one came the most close.

I probably could live with the Dutch notation here and there from the OS, but the English version is definitely a nogo.
W.

Comment 13

[Wim]

Some fooling around I stumbled on the use of Outlook on my system.
After setting my system coutry code to Frisian (probably fy) all dates in OL appeared in the Frisian language. Still, they don't appear in Sunbird in Frisian, but in English on dayview. Also the dateformat in weekview is wrong, january 16 instead of 16 januari.
Should I file a new bug on this one, or is someone actually looking at this bug already? Please respond before I file a new bug.

Comment 14

[Fabi]

Since fixing Bug 460988 this issue has reappeared in the lastest nightlies. 

Also, in addition to Comment #5 : I just realized that the "mouse-over" pop-up in all views is not in the OS language for multiple-day events (but it is for normal and all-day events)

Comment 15

[Pete Riley]

IMO using the OS settings is better because you have more power to customize the appearance of dates/times, plus then Lightning will automatically look the same as your other apps.

It's pretty easy to change the appearance of dates/times in Windows, just go to "Windows Control Panel > Regional Settings".  There's a dropdown box to choose your country (even if you're using a U.S. version of Windows).  This will translate all dates/times into your country's language and formats.  You can then customize it even more if you want.

I agree that Lightning should use the OS formats consistently and everywhere.

Comment 16

[Emerson Prado]

(In reply to comment #15)
> IMO using the OS settings is better because you have more power to customize
> the appearance of dates/times, plus then Lightning will automatically look the
> same as your other apps.

I don't think so. We (users) download localized builds in order to have localized text and formats. And Calendar gives us localized stuff in many places, but then OS language in this specific item (and a couple more, as per Comment #5 and Comment #7).

> It's pretty easy to change the appearance of dates/times in Windows, just go to
> "Windows Control Panel > Regional Settings".

This has at least two problems:
1.Sometimes, we need to run dedicated software which demands a specific setting, which is my case. I have to run Windows in en-US to have some test software to run in my machine.
2.Some languages have Calendar localizations but don't have an OS locale. Pls see the end of Bug 317607 Comment #2.

> This will
> translate all dates/times into your country's language and formats.  You can
> then customize it even more if you want.

What if one needs all dates/times/text in the localized language, rather than the OS language?

> I agree that Lightning should use the OS formats consistently and everywhere.

First of all, it should use formats consistently everywhere, agreed. But, IMHO, for the reasons above, I believe localized formats should be used instead.

Also, it doesn't seem clear that the problem is related to both date/time format AND wording. Pls see Comment #3 last paragraph (ignoring the "Thanks", sure). We're reading all of text, date and time in a language other than the one we chose for the localized build, and only in specific items.

Comment 17

[Emerson Prado]

BTW, it seems Bug 317607 was fixed using our proposed mindset: use localized language, since this was the one chosen by the user.

Comment 18

[Przemyslaw Bialik]

Bug 460988 was fixed, resolving this one as WONTFIX ?

Comment 19

[Emerson Prado]

It seems there's an agreement that Lightning will follow OS regional settings. If that's conclusive and doable, then yes, WONTFIX. We just need to make sure that, as mentioned in Bug 460988 Comment #21, ALL dates are shown in the same format.
But we're not addressing the other half of this bug: wording. Though date and number formats can become consistently OS-wise throughout the application, I still don't see a sense in using OS language wording in a localized application.