Bug 234889 – mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird: date/time shown as en_US even when LINGUAS=en_GB

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED INVALID

[Description Dan Wallis 2008-08-16 08:41:35 UTC]

Hello, Thunderbird does not respect LINGUAS=en_GB enough.

I've compiled Thunderbird with LINGUAS=en_GB, but my dates are still showing in en_US format (mm/dd/yy), rather than in en_GB format (dd/mm/yy). As a work-around, one can set LC_TIME=en_GB before launching Thunderbird, but surely this should be fixed further upstream than my local user environment.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. LINGUAS=en_GB emerge mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird
2. launch Thunderbird (through menu, or command line)
3. Observe date/time format 

Actual Results:  
Dates are shown in American format: mm/dd/yy

Expected Results:  
Dates are shown in British format: dd/mm/yy

[Comment 1 Rafał Mużyło 2008-08-16 21:07:28 UTC]

Actually, the LANG and LC_* variables are important in this case,
not the LINGUAS. So it probably works just like it should.

Just for reference, post your locale settings.

[Comment 2 Dan Wallis 2008-08-16 22:51:01 UTC]

Sorry, I probably made the impression that I know more about this than I actually do. Is this what you were after?

dan@tui ~ $ emerge --info | grep ^L 
LANG="C"
LINGUAS="en_GB"
dan@tui ~ $ 

[Comment 3 Robin Johnson 2008-08-17 00:12:26 UTC]

Try to set LC_ALL=en_GB in your user environment via bashrc or profile.
IIRC LINGUAS just lists what is supported.

[Comment 4 Dan Wallis 2008-08-17 00:34:20 UTC]

Isn't this the same work-around that I described in my original post? Yes, LC_ALL is different to LC_TIME, but the problem still remains; or have I misunderstood something?

With LC_TIME (or LC_ALL) set to "en_GB" in the environment from which Thunderbird is launched, things look correct.

My expectation was that setting LINGUAS=en_GB during compilation would make things look like en_GB, not en_US (or perhaps "C"). If that's not the point of setting a LINGUAS variable in portage, can someone please point me towards the documentation for its proper use?

[Comment 5 Raúl Porcel (RETIRED) 2008-08-30 16:13:51 UTC]

Well...the LINGUAS stuff is just for the langpack stuff, not for changing anything in the environment...probably upstream should change the date/time stuff depending on the useragent.locale we're using...

Can you try with -bin? This is really for upstream, we can't do nothing...

[Comment 6 Dan Wallis 2008-09-08 18:46:54 UTC]

Tried with -bin and got the same results. Sounds like a bug for upstream to me too.

[Comment 7 Dan Wallis 2008-09-27 22:29:26 UTC]

So, how does one report this upstream?

[Comment 8 DEMAINE Benoît-Pierre, aka DoubleHP 2008-12-06 01:30:48 UTC]

I compile with flags
LINGUAS="en fr en_GB fr_FR en_US"

and run this in my env (.xinitrc):
export LC_ALL="en_GB.iso885915"
export LANG="en_GB.iso885915"

and TB shows dates properly. Please try to recompile and report back.

Also say which TB version produces this problem for you, ans post your full emerge --info, and locale -a

[Comment 9 Jory A. Pratt 2009-12-24 13:41:44 UTC]

If you want to see this fixed you will have to get with the langpack maintainer upstream and ask them to fix it in the language pack.