Clock can't display international date format

[Tero Karvinen]

Clock applet does not show international ISO-6801 date format, even though EN_DK locale "English (Danish)" is enabled.

Instead, the clock still shows the US date "Sun Mar 12, 16:49". It should show "2006-03-12 16:49".

Most users like to use English user interface, but not US units and dates. Instead, most of the world uses the metric system (SI-system) and will probably be adopting ISO-8601 dates (like "2006-03-12 16:39").

Suggestion:
- make Clock (gnome-panel) respect EN_DK locale
and
- add ISO-8601 format to Clock:Preferences (it already has 24h option for time)

I am using Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy with gnome-panel 2.12.1-0ubuntu. In gdm login, I chose Languages:English (Danish) as recommended in
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-tune.en.html#s-ISO-locale
~$ locale
LANG=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_TIME=en_DK.utf8
LC_COLLATE="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

ISO-8601 date format is the recommendation of ISO and W3C:
http://www.iki.fi/karvinen/international_iso-8601_date_on_thunderbird.html#see_also

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. Do you have the language-pack-gnome-en-base package installed?

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Yes, I have language-pack-gnome-en 20051011.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

$ LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8 date
Mon Mar 20 16:31:34 CET 2006

This is precisely what the en_DK locale prescribes. Also, your manual LC_TIME definition should be en_DK.UTF-8 (not .utf8).

So, what is the bug here? clock-applet should provide an option to show ISO-style? Or is the locale definiton for the date format wrong?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Note that the format comes from the translation, so it reacts to LC_MESSAGES and not LC_TIME probably

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

> $ LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8 date
> Mon Mar 20 16:31:34 CET 2006
> This is precisely what the en_DK locale prescribes.

No it is not. I have filed a bug against date (coreutils) too. en_DK date would be 2006-03-20 17:49

For example, Thunderbird shows dates according to locales.
http://myy.helia.fi/~karte/international_iso-8601_date_on_thunderbird.html

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Also, locales work correctly in 'ls':

$ LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8 ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 tee tee 18432 2006-02-03 20:11 foo.txt
$ LC_TIME=en_US ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 tee tee 18432 Feb 3 20:11 foo.txt

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Gnome Clock format can't be changed in gconf-editor, even though it has keys for that.

$ gconf-editor
Edit:Find: "clock"

/apps/panel/profiles/default/applets/clock/prefs/format
Key description: "If set to "custom", the clock will display time
according to the format specified in the custom_format key."

/apps/panel/profiles/default/applets/clock/prefs/custom_format
Key description: "This key specifies the format used by the clock applet when the format key is set to "custom". You can use conversion specifiers understood by strftime() to obtain a specific format."

I set
- format: "custom"
- custom_format: "%x %X"
Removed clock in panel, then put it back. Logged off and on. Still, clock format does not change.

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Gnome Bug 122601 – Add possibility to format the hour using a gconf key and strftime
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122601

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Can set a custom date format with
$ gconf-editor
search: applet_
Find clock applet among about 5 applets.
Change for example 2006-04-16 16:39 Sun w15
custom_format: "%x %H:%M %a w%W"
format: "custom"
Clock format changes immidiately.

When format is "custom", Clock applet, right click: Preferences shows a dialog to edit custom format. This only works once, after that it must be edited in gconf-editor.

Copy date does not work.

I did not yet find a way to put short localized date in it: "%x %X" shows seconds, even if show seconds is not selected, and even if 'ls' shows only minutes with the same LC_DATE.

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

Week numbers are incorrect gnome-clock pop up calendar.

I have week starting day set to Monday in every place I could think of: 'locale': LC_TIME=en_DK.utf8, Evolution, searching in gconf-editor only shows settings of week starting day Monday. Week numbers are displayed correctly in Evolution when I double click a date in panel clock pop-up calendar.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Probably the same issue than http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=323453 upstream

[sibidiba (sibidiba)]

Still not resolved, in Feisty Fawn it's impossible to get the clock applet display the calendar so that weeks are beginning from Monday.

Please remember that the week begins on Monday in a lot of countries (for example in all European ones).

[Daniel Nylander (yeager)]

Filed this now, http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465343