Ubuntu
langpack-locales package

Strange date format in en_SG locale

Bug #699886 reported by KH Teo
10
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
GLibC
Fix Released
Medium
langpack-locales (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Low
Martin Pitt

Bug Description

Currently under English (Singapore) locale date and time are formatted like this: Friday 07,January,2011 11:44:44 PM SGT

The commas are weird and it is not the convention in Singapore. Also unlike other locales, it uses full day and month names.

I suggest that the formatting be change to something like: Fri 07 Jan 2011 11:44:44 PM SGT

Revision history for this message
KH Teo (khteo) wrote :
Brian Murray (brian-murray)
tags: added: patch
Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

Thank you! Can you please also report this to http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=glibc so that it can be applied upstream?

Revision history for this message
In , KH Teo (khteo) wrote :

Downstream report at https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/699886

Currently under English (Singapore) locale date_fmt is formatted like this: Friday 07,January,2011 11:44:44 PM SGT

The commas are weird and are not the convention in Singapore. The attached patch changes that and other related formats to better values:

t_fmt_ampm from "%I:%M:%S %p %Z" to "%I:%M:%S %p" (removed time zone; redundant because Singapore spans only one time zone)
t_fmt from "%I:%M:%S %Z" to "%T" (changed to 24h time)
d_t_fmt from "%A %d,%B,%Y %I:%M:%S %Z" to "%a %d %b %Y %r" (removed awkward commas, use abbreviated month names)
d_fmt from "%A %d,%B,%Y" to "%d/%m/%Y"

Revision history for this message
In , KH Teo (khteo) wrote :

Created attachment 5305
Patch to en_SG

Revision history for this message
KH Teo (khteo) wrote :

Upstream report at: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12582

tags: added: patch-forwarded-upstream
Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

Cool, thanks!

Changed in glibc:
importance: Undecided → Unknown
status: New → Unknown
Changed in langpack-locales (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Martin Pitt (pitti)
status: New → In Progress
Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)
Changed in langpack-locales (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Low
assignee: Martin Pitt (pitti) → Dustin Kirkland (kirkland)
assignee: Dustin Kirkland (kirkland) → nobody
Changed in glibc:
status: Unknown → In Progress
status: In Progress → New
Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

Committed to packaging bzr, thanks!

Changed in langpack-locales (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Martin Pitt (pitti)
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package langpack-locales - 2.13+git20100825-4

---------------
langpack-locales (2.13+git20100825-4) natty; urgency=low

  * Add ubuntu-es_NI-currency.patch: Fix LC_MONETARY symbol. Thanks Leandro
    Gómez for the patch! (LP: #546581)
  * Add ubuntu-en_SG-timeformat.patch: Fix strange date format. Thanks KH Teo
    for the patch! (LP: #699886)
  * Add ubuntu-es_NI-papersize.patch: The standard paper size in Nicaragua is
    US Letter, not A4. Thanks Leandro Gómez for the patch! (LP: #586700)
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:32:38 +0100

Changed in langpack-locales (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
In , Drepper-fsp (drepper-fsp) wrote :

Where is the reference for the change? And don't reference other bug report systems, all the information must be entered here.

Revision history for this message
In , KH Teo (khteo) wrote :

(In reply to comment #2)
> Where is the reference for the change?

I'm not able to find a national standard for this, and in fact actual formats used vary from site to site:

Government websites : http://www.gov.sg/ http://www.nlb.gov.sg/
Local newspapers: http://www.straitstimes.com/ http://www.todayonline.com/

However, my point is that the current format where the day/month/year are delimited by commas does not reflect actual local usage. The formats I picked in the patch are similar to those used in en_GB (due to Singapore's historical links with the UK as a former colony.)

> And don't reference other bug report
> systems, all the information must be entered here.

Okay, but all information is presented here already.

Revision history for this message
In , Drepper-fsp (drepper-fsp) wrote :

I looked around myself and found nothing resembling the current format. The patch is applied. Next time provide a patch with a complete file name.

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in glibc:
importance: Unknown → Medium
status: New → Fix Released
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