[Bug 1024663] Re: Custom regional formats

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Hi David,
Thanks for your effort to make Ubuntu better by submitting this bug!

As regards your first item, I'm currently trying to address it in other
ways than changing language-selector. Your comment on
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687945 would be appreciated.
It might make a difference, actually.

I'm not sure about your second item. Programmers should be aware that
the output from e.g. the date() command is affected by the locale
environment.

$ env | grep LC_TIME
LC_TIME=sv_SE.UTF-8
$ date
ons 28 nov+ 2012 09.50.+14 CET
$ LC_TIME= date
Wed Nov 28 09:50:22 CET 2012

Still adding a coreutils task to this bug, which carries /bin/date.

As for the first example in you third item, it is possible to set the
paper size separately, since there is a separate LC_PAPER locale
category. The line

export LC_PAPER="hu_HU.UTF-8"

in ~/.profile should do it. Setting only the first day of the week is not possible, though, since all the date and time related format aspects are controlled by one single locale category, i.e. LC_TIME. Implementing such a customization possibility would be quite a significant change. In Ubuntu 13.04 or 13.10 language-selector will be replaced by the GNOME UI for setting language and locales, so such a change won't happen in language-selector. If you consider it important enough, I would recommend that you submit a separate bug; a GNOME bug would be best:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=gnome-control-center&component=Region%20%26%20Language

** Bug watch added: GNOME Bug Tracker #687945
   https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687945

** Also affects: glib via
   https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687945
   Importance: Unknown
       Status: Unknown

** Also affects: coreutils (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: language-selector (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Confirmed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1024663

Title:
  Custom regional formats

Status in The "G" Library - GLib:
  Unknown
Status in “coreutils” package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in “language-selector” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Regional formats should be customizable. Currently the user is capable
  of selecting a locale, and that locale will determine how dates are
  displayed, the first day of the week, etc. However, it is not possible
  to override any of these choices -- it's a 'take it or leave it'
  decision. There are several problems with that:

  1. If the system language is English, and I set the RF to Hungarian,
  the names of months, days will be Hungarian, while the rest of the
  interface remains English, which is confusing.

  2. RF settings apply to the command line too; once again, introducing
  a different date format, names of days and months, which may cause
  scripts to stop working. That may be a problem for developers (or for
  users who download scripts from a developer's page, which, with
  smartphones, Calibre, etc., is not so uncommon as someone might
  think). The settings for the GUI and the command line should be
  distinct.

  3. Very often one would like to change just one setting (A4 paper size
  for printing, Monday as the first day of the week, etc.), which is
  currently not possible.

  I understand there was a similar bug, number 40669. However, the fix
  only added the Regional Formats tab, and ignored part of the problem
  of the reporter: "it's impossible to configure a system that uses
  English GUI strings and the rest in native format."

  This functionality has been available in Windows and KDE forever.
  Ubuntu has parted ways with Gnome with regard to the DE, and it would
  be very welcome if we could also say goodbye to the Gnome mindset and
  actually give some power to the user. After all, even smartphones,
  which are definitely consumer devices, allow this type of
  customization.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: language-selector-gnome 0.79
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-27.43-generic 3.2.21
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-27-generic i686
  ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu11
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Sat Jul 14 11:32:04 2012
  ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-language-selector
  InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release i386 (20111012)
  InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.7
  PackageArchitecture: all
  SourcePackage: language-selector
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-05-03 (71 days ago)

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