OOo 2_0 enters dates as MM/DD/YY violating global KDE and YaST settings
Maybe this is slightly OT but it's related to an app I run on SUSE Linux and so I post it here. I am using OOo 2_001 on SUSE 10.0 KDE 3.5RC1. I entered a date as 2005-11-26. It displayed it in the cell as 11/26/05. I got irritated. My settings are: KDE Control Center > Regional & Accessibility > Country/Region & Language Short date format: DD-MM-YYYY and YaST > System > Date and Time has Region = Asia and Time Zone = Calcutta with Time and Date showing as 26-11-2005. This being so, how come the program is showing me the American date format? Even if it did not display in the ISO format I entered the date in, it has no business using a regional setting other than what I have specified system-wide. I dug into the OOo Tools > Options > Language Settings > Languages menu and found that User Interface, Locale Setting are both at Default with only the Default Languages for Documents > Western being English (USA). Changing this to English (UK) does not help, even after restarting OOo. Any thoughts/help? Thanks.
On Saturday 26 November 2005 11:05 am, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
I am using OOo 2_001 on SUSE 10.0 KDE 3.5RC1. I entered a date as 2005-11-26. It displayed it in the cell as 11/26/05. I got irritated.
You mention a lot of settings..... but not what your OO settings are for date formatting. Would seem to be the first place to look.
Saturday 26 November 2005 22:13 samaye Bruce Marshall alekhiit:
On Saturday 26 November 2005 11:05 am, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
I am using OOo 2_001 on SUSE 10.0 KDE 3.5RC1. I entered a date as 2005-11-26. It displayed it in the cell as 11/26/05. I got irritated.
You mention a lot of settings..... but not what your OO settings are for date formatting. Would seem to be the first place to look.
Kindly inform me whereabout in Tools > Options this specific "settings for date formatting" are, and I shall certainly look there. As it is, I found no such setting. Shriramana.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2005-11-28 at 07:22 +0530, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
You mention a lot of settings..... but not what your OO settings are for date formatting. Would seem to be the first place to look.
Kindly inform me whereabout in Tools > Options this specific "settings for date formatting" are, and I shall certainly look there. As it is, I found no such setting.
Open OpenOffice --> Tools menu, Options entry. In the dialog there, under the "Language Settings/Language" tab, there is a "Locale setting" (second from the top) where you can select yours. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDi1q2tTMYHG2NR9URAj8BAJ9U6mlKreZh9y6WIzf6FUpNkOjq0QCdF3t0 1xC0PJb6SWwmzZ5Gd2ddXbY= =Al0r -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Saturday 2005-11-26 at 21:35 +0530, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
I am using OOo 2_001 on SUSE 10.0 KDE 3.5RC1. I entered a date as 2005-11-26. It displayed it in the cell as 11/26/05. I got irritated.
I entered the same date, and got "26/11/05", which is correct for Spain.
KDE Control Center > Regional & Accessibility > Country/Region & Language Short date format: DD-MM-YYYY
That does not affect OOo, I think.
YaST > System > Date and Time has Region = Asia and Time Zone = Calcutta with Time and Date showing as 26-11-2005.
Neither.
This being so, how come the program is showing me the American date format? Even if it did not display in the ISO format I entered the date in, it has no business using a regional setting other than what I have specified system-wide.
What does the command "locale" say? Mine says: en_US.UTF-8 and if I leave OOo at "default" the same date as above shows as "11/26/05", ie, US locale. Therefore, either correct your system/user locale (it can be different for each user, mind!), or simply tell OOo what is the exact "locale" you want. I set it to "Hindi", and I got "26-11-2005". I'm not sure if it applies only to new sheets or the current one also.
I dug into the OOo Tools > Options > Language Settings > Languages menu and found that User Interface, Locale Setting are both at Default with only the Default Languages for Documents > Western being English (USA). Changing this to English (UK) does not help, even after restarting OOo.
Not "language/user interface", but "locale setting". I have the former set to English (USA), but the later to "Spanish (Spain)". I don't like translations. The "languages for documents" applies to the spell checker and some other things, not to the date format. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDicaPtTMYHG2NR9URAnxpAJ9aPqtkUYsTTM9AoTLPAkPGGGoKUgCdEtvr mpEDo5+qsw3oEVeprKf96jQ= =i31A -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Sunday 2005-11-27 at 15:45 +0100, I wrote:
What does the command "locale" say? Mine says:
en_US.UTF-8
Errata; I meant: LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8" - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDichytTMYHG2NR9URAmkdAJ4sQqTmCLEFulfsbcy6kjiF+IytSQCgkCB9 st5a8UXsZKlkAFzJTtj7RsE= =aaqY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Sun, 27 Nov 2005, Carlos E. R. wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
The Saturday 2005-11-26 at 21:35 +0530, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
I am using OOo 2_001 on SUSE 10.0 KDE 3.5RC1. I entered a date as 2005-11-26. It displayed it in the cell as 11/26/05. I got irritated.
I entered the same date, and got "26/11/05", which is correct for Spain.
KDE Control Center > Regional & Accessibility > Country/Region & Language Short date format: DD-MM-YYYY
That does not affect OOo, I think.
YaST > System > Date and Time has Region = Asia and Time Zone = Calcutta with Time and Date showing as 26-11-2005.
There should be _one_ place to set locale information for the system, _everything_ should use that global setting except for particular users who specify differently, and the users' settings should be made in _one_ place for (each) desktop, and all desktops should honour that setting. Having to specify settings differently for each application (I think Mozilla suite also exhibits this unfriendly behaviour) is, as shown here, a source of confusion, and while the status quo persists, people will continue to be confused and inconvenienced. A tautology, I know.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2005-11-28 at 06:40 +0800, John Summerfield wrote:
There should be _one_ place to set locale information for the system, _everything_ should use that global setting except for particular users who specify differently, and the users' settings should be made in _one_ place for (each) desktop, and all desktops should honour that setting.
OOo honours the user's locale, if you leave OOo at "default" locale, which is the default setting. IMO, it can not honour KDE's definition of locale, as it is not a kde application. What would happen if the user then started gnome? It would change behavior, and the rule in Linux is that applications should honour the "LC_TIME" setting. Rather, kde should set "LC_TIME" appropriately so that applications could use it. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDilxVtTMYHG2NR9URAlrXAJ9WukHF3XN1ZV9OYzinh/J5bEjeyACfVzeI wk04WylWt6gS7MG/whN6Bbs= =uNzG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On 11/28/05, Carlos E. R. <robin1.listas@tiscali.es> wrote:
OOo honours the user's locale, if you leave OOo at "default" locale, which is the default setting.
IMO, it can not honour KDE's definition of locale, as it is not a kde application. What would happen if the user then started gnome? It would change behavior, and the rule in Linux is that applications should honour the "LC_TIME" setting.
Rather, kde should set "LC_TIME" appropriately so that applications could use it.
All right. Accepted. So explain to me why the same thing happens in Windows XP? Windows is not as polite to us Indians as Linux is. There is no separate locale setting called India which automatically sets the date etc format to the Indian standard. (Linux has this.) So I select en_us and then customize the date format and everything. So according to Windows Control Center the default date format is DD-MM-YYYY. Even hitting F5 (Edit > Time/Date) in Notepad gives me 07:38 28-Nov-2005 - the correct format. But OOo 2_0 on Windows does not behave properly either.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2005-11-28 at 07:47 +0530, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
All right. Accepted. So explain to me why the same thing happens in Windows XP?
I have no idea! :-)
Windows is not as polite to us Indians as Linux is. There is no separate locale setting called India which automatically sets the date etc format to the Indian standard. (Linux has this.)
Unbelievable! India is a very big market, I should think - unless you have several locales, and they don't know which to choose. They should look at a language instead, as Hindi, like Linux did. I really don't know, you are the other side of the world for me ;-)
So I select en_us and then customize the date format and everything. So according to Windows Control Center the default date format is DD-MM-YYYY. Even hitting F5 (Edit > Time/Date) in Notepad gives me 07:38 28-Nov-2005 - the correct format. But OOo 2_0 on Windows does not behave properly either.
But I suppose that in the options menu of OOo you can set the locale for OOo at pleasure. That's what I do: my Linux locale is set to "US", but in OpenOffice Options menu I set it to "Spanish (Spain)" instead of default. You have more liberty this way: OOo follows the system default, or you can set it to ignore it. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDiwS4tTMYHG2NR9URApAfAJ9H1d9QbPdeFCt4MD6cvmssDiQLIQCgg+aR YBp7k5PJTN4ypRktbkkzjQQ= =cYnB -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Sunday 27 November 2005 20:15 samaye Carlos E. R. alekhiit:
KDE Control Center > Regional & Accessibility > Country/Region & Language Short date format: DD-MM-YYYY
That does not affect OOo, I think.
Why should it not? I agree with John, that if it's set here, it should be global.
What does the command "locale" say? Mine says:
en_US.UTF-8
and if I leave OOo at "default" the same date as above shows as "11/26/05", ie, US locale.
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8" Now why is this? KDE Control Center has Country or Region pointing to India with all the previews at the bottom in the appropriate Indian format.
Therefore, either correct your system/user locale (it can be different for each user, mind!), or simply tell OOo what is the exact "locale" you want.
My point was, when I set OOo to "default" locale and I specify the active locale to be India, then why does not OOo behave as such? I will check this in Windows, and if same problem there too (or even if not) I will report it as an OOo issue. Shriramana.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2005-11-28 at 07:26 +0530, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
KDE Control Center > Regional & Accessibility > Country/Region & Language Short date format: DD-MM-YYYY
That does not affect OOo, I think.
Why should it not? I agree with John, that if it's set here, it should be global.
Because OOo reads the "locale" environment variables instead. Notice that there are more than one "desktop": there is gnome, there is fwmn... each one with its own settings.
What does the command "locale" say? Mine says:
en_US.UTF-8
and if I leave OOo at "default" the same date as above shows as "11/26/05", ie, US locale.
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
Now why is this? KDE Control Center has Country or Region pointing to India with all the previews at the bottom in the appropriate Indian format.
Yes, probably kde should alter the locale environment variables, but it doesn't, it seems.
Therefore, either correct your system/user locale (it can be different for each user, mind!), or simply tell OOo what is the exact "locale" you want.
My point was, when I set OOo to "default" locale and I specify the active locale to be India, then why does not OOo behave as such? I will check this in Windows, and if same problem there too (or even if not) I will report it as an OOo issue.
I think it is rather a kde issue. It would be interesting to know what the OOo developers think and why they did it that way: I'm sure they have thought about it a lot. In windows, I dunno. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD4DBQFDiwajtTMYHG2NR9URAlJMAJdloLqByJ4g4umo1dxzUxIMIsUEAJ4jmnl6 IiPJemzdBP49p0UVp0MI/A== =qmpT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Monday 28 November 2005 19:01 samaye Carlos E. R. alekhiit:
Because OOo reads the "locale" environment variables instead. Notice that there are more than one "desktop": there is gnome, there is fwmn... each one with its own settings.
Methinks OOo should be intelligent enough to detect the current environment and take the settings from it.
I think it is rather a kde issue. It would be interesting to know what the OOo developers think and why they did it that way: I'm sure they have thought about it a lot.
Filed an issue: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=58598 Please contribute. Shriramana.
participants (4)
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Bruce Marshall -
Carlos E. R. -
John Summerfield -
Shriramana Sharma