No GUI option to change week-starting day

[Roddie McLaggan]

There is no easily accessible way for a user to change the which day of the week the calendar starts on. This is a problem in all GNOME and Unity versions of Ubuntu.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.2.0-0ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic i686
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
Architecture: i386
CasperVersion: 1.287
Date: Thu Oct 20 11:41:52 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-control-center
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release i386 (20111012)
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
usr_lib_gnome-control-center:
 deja-dup 20.0-0ubuntu3
 gnome-bluetooth 3.2.0-0ubuntu1
 indicator-datetime 0.3.0-0ubuntu3

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Thanks for your effort to help improve Ubuntu by pointing at this aspect of user preferences!

Indeed there is a suitable GUI for the purpose, namely the "Regional Formats" tab in Language Support. If you for instance prefer the US conventions for dates and times (weeks begin on Sunday), you pick the en_US locale, etc.

Actually I would argue against adding such a control to the Time & Date settings module. Language Support's "Regional Formats" tab - and its successor in Precise - is there for a reason, and when a user selects a region for controlling this kind of settings, s/he can be assumed to expect that the choice is effective all over the desktop. In other words, typically I don't think that app specific UIs that override the user's choice in Language Support is a good idea. Btw, the existing control for setting 12-hour or 24-hour time is superfluous IMO.

How about dealing with this bug report by simply adding a link from the Time & Date module to the central desktop tool for regional formats settings?

[Roddie McLaggan (pentaro)]

Thanks for the response but as a UK resident, this is an insufficient solution; I don't want to have to change to the US locale which will affect settings other than just the day which the week starts on in the calendar.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

If I understand it correctly, you live in UK, where a week starts on Monday, but still wants that the calendar on your desktop displays weeks starting on Sunday. Out of curiosity, why?

One thing you can do, if that is what you want, is to add the line

  export LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"

as is mentioned at ghelp:language-selector#format-advanced
Doing so limits the adaption to US conventions to date and time related format.

The level of detail with respect to the UIs for user settings is a trade off between varying personal preferences. Please keep in mind that a high level of detail, to satisfy wishes of a small number of users, may have drawbacks.

[Roddie McLaggan (pentaro)]

Just because I live in the UK doesn't necessarily mean I want Monday as the first day of the week on my computer. Likewise, I've seen Americans who don't want Sunday as the first day. I have two jobs that both use Sunday - Saturday and it's annoying that I can choose this setting on things like my phone but not on my computer. Of course I know I can change it by adding lines to config files but I am specifically requesting a GUI option for such a simple feature. If my mother calls to ask how to change her calendar I shouldn't have to tell her the only option is to edit config files.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

I suppose there are good arguments for every little settings possibility on any computer, but let's agree to disagree on this particular one now.

And while waiting for others' possible views we might teach the US folks what a week is. :)

[Satchit Bhogle (satchitb)]

Just a couple of things.
1. This is a really small thing that should be easy to fix. I don't think it really requires that kind of debate if there are users requesting it.
2. If we're ever working with Google Calendar or something which DOES have this preference, it may be useful to have this option.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Andrei (andrei-doom)]

"Btw, the existing control for setting 12-hour or 24-hour time is superfluous IMO." Yeah, let's start restricting just about everything in the OS just because it's "easy" to not implement the features. If YOU don't give a damn about a setting, that doesn't mean all people share your opinion. Furthermore, if the implementation for the requested feature is trivial, then why the hell would you even bother to condemn people who request it ? Every single major OS out there has this option, only this one hasn't just because you don't deem it necessarily ? I'm sorry, but that's just arrogant. I'm quite astounded by this opinion.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Andrei,
It makes me disappointed to see - both here and at bug 944340 - that you are more interested in whining than holding a constructive conversation. Bye.

[Andrei (andrei-doom)]

It makes me disappointed to see that people like you (hopefully not a lot) are in a position to make important changes to this distribution.

"I hold a Bachelor's degree of Business Administration in Accounting" Go figure... with that half-baked logic. This is what happens when you put an engineer's task in the arms of an economist. Another one on the list. #ww3

[starko (starko-chello)]

Gunnar, just like Andrei i find your reasoning flawed.

As for ability to set arbitrary time formats and week starting days ect - more and more people live and work in a global world where the lines between time zones, customs, working environments become more and more blurred. Think of international companies with offices all over the world that might use en_US while needing to work with the local time and week conventions. Similar applies to millions of local companies that hire international workforce...

[krusade (krusade)]

I know this is an old bug but there is still no way to change first day of the week in 2014 without undesirable consequences. I find it a bit astounding that such reasoning is used to not accept this as a bug. As already mentioned, every other operating system has this option. And the reason they do is that it's useful to people. I will not go on repeating the arguments for it, I believe there is no question to how obvious they are. This restriction affects the user experience in a negative way and it does so with no good reason. Following this logic we can make the argument that no user customization is necessary or justified.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Somebody should forward that upstream to GNOME as indicated before...

[erik (erik-eriksson)]

This seems to be the bug in the upstream GNOME bug tracker: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=703317

[erik (erik-eriksson)]

This Gnome shell extension fixes it the problem: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/646/weeks-start-on-monday/

[Daniel Scholtus (sdeonline)]

Would you please implement this feature?
There are MANY reasons why people needs this..
I'll give you mine if you like:
- I live in Argentina, so my setting on 'Regional Formats' is 'Spanish'.
- I like English, I code in English, etc.. so my Language locale is en_US.
- I'm a 7th Day Adventist, so I believe Saturday is the LAST day of the week.
As far as my configuration goes, It's all almost ok, EXCEPT the damn calendar, which doesn't follow the Spanish locale neither en_US apparently (I've checked those files and they have first_day set to '1'...
I'm on Ubuntu 13.10, and it's pretty annoying not to have a trivial menu item for this...