better dates in Mozilla Thunderbird reply_header?

wylbur

Does anyone know how/if I could use strftime-like functions to customize the Mozilla Thunderbird [version 1.0 (20041231)] reply_header fields? I want my replies to look like

Chaosite · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 8:25 pm Post subject:

No idea, other than the fact that I never seen yy/mm/dd dates... They usually come up as yyyy/mm/dd, right?

zervus · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 133

wylbur · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 8:46 pm Post subject: environment variables

in my googling, I found that the environment variable LC_TIME affects the reply_header_ondate formatting. I've just changed LC_time to "de_DE@euro" and I get the dd.mm.yyyy format in the reply -- yay! That's not what zervus reported, but it's always nice to be able to affect the thing we want to fix.

I'll play with LANG next, but I don't want to hose the dictionary settings (which I need to keep pointed at en_US).

Does anyone know of a listing of all the date locale formats? I've man'd locale and setlocale and strftime to no avail. thanks -- wylbur.

wylbur · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 9:16 pm Post subject: locale src files

Ok, I've made progress. This is clearly something I'm spending WAY too much time on, but...

with LC_TIME=en_US, here are the settings:

zervus · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Jan 2005 Posts: 133

Yep, there's more than one environment variable that affects your language and time settings. I didn't know about LC_TIME, but thanks for reporting, I think that fits me better than using LANG as well.

I guess you could just use

wylbur · Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 10:27 pm Post subject: more on this

resetting LC_TIME just before thunderbird is a great idea, zervus. Here's a bit more info.

The tbird folks define 5 "modes" for date displays (http://kb-upgrade.mozillazine.org/Change_the_Date_Format). Modes 0, 3, and 4 seem hard-coded to fairly obvious strftime values.

Modes 1 and 2, however, depend on the strftime definitions in the LC_TIME section of the current locale. The reply_header_ontime seems to be hard-linked to mode 1, the long form.

Unfortunately, for en_* locales (AU US GB BW IE NZ ZA ZW DK) , mode 1==mode 2 in tbird. In locales (HK IN PH SG), mode 1 is truly long in tbird date displays. Locale DK has an especially nice mode 2, IMO.

In my crude hacking, it seems that mode 1 is what the locale definition (found in /usr/share/i18n/locales) calls d_t_fmt, and mode 2 is d_fmt. The frustrating part is that in the en_US locale file, d_t_fmt != d_fmt, but nonetheless in tbird, mode 1 == mode 2.

The giveaway, though, is that the en_SG d_t_fmt is a little buggy (too many commas, not enough spaces), and that bug shows up in the locale file and in tbird mode 1 displays.

I'm done, I've got real work to do. LC_TIME="en_IN" for me (even though I prefer en_DK for mode 2). If anyone decides to hack the locale files, I'd be a happy guinea pig.

-- wylbur

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

I am an Australian living in Germany. I am used to the German way of writing the date and time by now (dd.mm.yyyy + 24 hour time) but still prefer to see my text in English when given the choice. I prefer this, not only because I am used to it now, but after many years as an international citizen, I find dd/mm/yyy and mm/dd/yyy confusing.

If I set LC_TIME to de_DE@euro, then I get the numberic formats that I want, but the text of the days and dates are written in German. I can read the German text, but call me fussy, I would just prefer to have it in English if possible.

Is there a pre-existing locale for this, or would I have to create my own? Does anyone know how to go about this?

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

I just had a go creating my own locale.

I compared en_AU, en_IE and de_DE and basically ended up taking en_AU as a base and changing the euro field and the date format fields. I also used http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg20/docs/n897-14652w25.pdf as a reference.

cd /usr/share/i18n/locales
diff en_AU en_bludger
59c59
< currency_symbol "<U0024>"
---
> currency_symbol "<U20AC>"
112c112
< d_fmt "<U0025><U0064><U002F><U0025><U006D><U002F><U0025><U0079>"
---
> d_fmt "<U0025><U0064><U002E><U0025><U006D><U002E><U0025><U0079>"
114,116c114,115
< am_pm "<U0041><U004D>";"<U0050><U004D>"
< t_fmt_ampm "<U0025><U0049><U003A><U0025><U004D><U003A><U0025><U0053><U0020>/
< <U0025><U0070>"
---
> am_pm "";""
> t_fmt_ampm ""

localedef -i en_bludger -f ISO-8859-15 en_bludger (to write create the locale)
then edit /etc/env.d/02locale and env-update

I might have to edit this again to further customise it, I suppose.

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

I was not sure whether I had to rebuild glibc after creating this new locale, but I don't think so. After I did rebuild it, "locale -a" did not show my new locale, so I loaded it again with localedef and there it was.

The problem is that Xlibs don't recognise the new locale. If I try to load any X application, I get the message "locale not supported by Xlib, locale set to C". I tried mucking around with /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/locale.alias, but to no avail.

Does anyone have any idea how to get this working? Otherwise I will just have to switch back to a mix of en_IE and de_DE.

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

I also prefer 09.06.2005 to 09.06.05, so I edited
/usr/share/i18n/locales again and changed
d_fmt "<U0025><U0064><U002E><U0025><U006D><U002E><U0025><U0079>"
to
d_fmt "<U0025><U0064><U002E><U0025><U006D><U002E><U0025><U0059>"
(ie. %y to %Y)

I also noticed that you have to specify the destination path with localeconf:
localedef -i en_bludger -f ISO-8859-15 /usr/lib/locale/en_bludger

Editing /usr/lib/X11/locale/locale.alias with
en_bludger: en_IE.ISO8859-15
seemed to fix the error message. Strangely, I still get the date format in thunderbird that I want though. ie. 09.06.2005 with en_bludger instead of 09/06/05 with en_IE. If someone can explain this, I would appreciate it.