GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 332190
Message listview shows time in AM/PM format even if 24 hour format is selected
Last modified: 2009-03-04 16:23:21 UTC
The folder message list's Date column shows dates in format "Yesterday 05:13 PM" even when I've chosen to use 24 h time formats in all relevant places (list below). The message pane's Date header IS formatted 24 hour, as is the calendar, etc. Other information: My LANG is en_US.utf-8 because there is no GUI to change it (FC4 + Gnome 2.12.1 updates). I have not located a GNOME-global date/time format preference dialog, so if there is such a setting, I haven't changed it. However, I *have* set 24 h format to the Panel's Clock applet, and inside Evolution's Calendar and Tasks general preferences. The only place where I commonly see the AM/PM format on the desktop is the Evolution message list.
i'm shamelessly quoting an old posting by guenther from the evolution users mailing list here: "Evolution respects locales and should adjust its GUI accordingly. LANGUAGE This sets the overall language in Evolution and effects the whole UI (like buttons, menus, etc.) as well as the "yesterday" in the mail list. It even can effect sorting (upper/lowercase). LC_TIME This effects the time display (for example "9:00 PM" vs. "21:00" and "12/30/2993" vs. "30.12.2003") as well as the abbreviations for Days and Months. They are specified in special locale settings on your system. You can test this and Evolutions behavior by running Evolution from a terminal and forcing the locales: $ LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 /usr/bin/evolution Adjust the locales to your needs. If this will solve your issues, adjust the locales for the Desktop, or simply start Evolution by a wrapper script. For convenience, create a script (don't forget the executable flag) and place it in your path before the evolution binary is found or call it directly. --- snip --- #!/bin/sh export LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8 /usr/bin/evolution & --- snip --- As you did not mention the language I have to assume English. British English does use 24 hour format. HTH ...guenther" setting to NEEDINFO, please REOPEN when commenting. thanks. :-)
Thanks, but: [oa@libretto ~]$ evolution --force-shutdown Shutting down evolution-alarm-notify (Evolution Calendar alarm notification service) [oa@libretto ~]$ LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 [oa@libretto ~]$ export LANG [oa@libretto ~]$ LC_TIME=$LANG [oa@libretto ~]$ export LC_TIME [oa@libretto ~]$ evolution ..Still AM/PM formatting.. Anyway, I do agree that using the LC_* variables probably is the best way to do this, but it highlights the lack of a preferences dialog for setting the LC_* variables on a system-wide basis. Would help getting rid of similar preferences in many individual apps...
yes, but that's not an evolution issue, but a gnome and/or distro issue :-)
en_GB.UTF-8 didn't do the trick, but this did: LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC="fi_FI.UTF-8" LC_TIME="fi_FI.UTF-8" LC_COLLATE="fi_FI.UTF-8" LC_MONETARY="fi_FI.UTF-8" LC_PAPER="fi_FI.UTF-8" export LANG LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME LC_COLLATE LC_MONETARY LC_PAPER Funnily enough, it also caused the following: * listview's "short date" for previous week's messages turned from "Mon 11:31 AM" to "ma 11:31", ie localised up to weekday names, as well as month names for older messages * However, yesterday's message still say "Yesterday 18:29" instead of "eilen 18:29", as would be expected * Message pane still shows date as "Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:29:45 -0000 (18:29 EET)", ie no localisation taking place Re comment #3, true. Not sure where to file that under.
Please read comment 0 again. Well, the quote of an old list post by me. ;) Yes, LC_TIME affects the time/date string format displayed in the mail list, Date column. Yes, it properly effects the Day/Month name abbreviations as well. Regarding the untranslated Yesterday and Today strings: This did work at the time I posted the original mails. This kind of was broken recently. See bug 333003. Regarding the headers in the message pane: The Date: header currently is the raw string as it is in the mails header. No translation at all. Apart from an added string in paranthesis adjusting to localtime, if the timezones differ. I do know for sure this is filed as well, though I don't recall the bug number right now. Now, back to the original report: All Evo related settings regarding AM/PM vs 24hour format is limited to other Components but Mailer. The Mailer actually does respect LC_TIME for the mail list. I do know, I use it all the time. :) OA, if it does not for you, there are 2 possible reasons: a) Your en_GB.UTF-8 locale is broken or not installed. b) LC_ALL is set. Note that LC_ALL takes precedence and overwrites LC_LANG. To hunt this down, the following commands are useful: $ LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8 date +%x $ locale
Closing this bug, as per comment 5. Evolution does properly display the time/date format in the mail list according to LC_TIME env var and changes M/PM vs. 24hour format by this. OA, if you seriously think, this is an Evo issue and needs to be fixed in Evo, please feel free to reopen this bug. Thanks for taking the time to report this issue. Please feel free to report any further bugs you fnd.
FWIW, I do agree the GNOME Desktop wide env vars should be more generally tweakable by the user in a more friendly and easy way... (Sounds like a control-center issue, to me. ;-)
Re #5 (please read), do you mean LANGUAGE vs LANG? I couldn't see LANGUAGE affecting anything at all, so I assumed that was a typo. en_GB does seem to be installed, so I'm not sure why it didn't affect Evo in my first try (LC_ALL is not set).. [oa@libretto ~]$ LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8 date +%x 02/03/06 [oa@libretto ~]$ LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8 date +%x 03/02/2006 The bug you mentioned regarding date display in the message pane is 318555. Agre that this can be closed in light of that and 333003. Many thanks for your time helping me out, and thanks for the control-center pointer, enhancement request filed as 333104.
Coming here from https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=350558 As pointed out there already: Still I don't agree with the discussion. Why should anyone want to change the time format system wide just to see the mail listings in the desired format ? Also I think it is legitimate to assume, that if someone sets calendar and tasks to 24 hour format she/he is likely to want the same for email listings. Also it appears, when LC_TIME is set to a metric locale, that the choice between AM/PM and 24hour is disabled in calender and tasks. This seems to be somewhat illogic in light of the above discussion. And,last but not least, how is the average user supposed to know this ?
I just went and checked this with Windows XP and Outlook 2003 There the settings are taken from the locale _completely_ I did not find an instance in Outlook that lets you configure date or time. Therefore you can configure the locale in control center completely free by either choosing a preconfigured locale or configuring an existing one to your needs. So the confusion arises probably from mixing both components as Evolution does. Again I suggest using the settings form calendar and tasks Evolution wide or removing them altogether and putting a hint in the help file as to how to configure a proper locale that fits your needs.
*** Bug 379981 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This doesn't seem to be working right for me. If I do LC_TIME=en_GB date +%X I get a 24-hour clock time. If I do LC_TIME=en_GB evolution& I get the date column in the mail list in 12-hour time. (Evolution 2.12.3)
Yes, this partially also depends on translations, see bug 336253.