[Bug localedata/773] New: de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[Bug localedata/773] New: de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[julian at mehnle dot net]

The de_DE locale (and de_DE@euro, and probably other European locales) should
use the ISO-8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD) according to the national standards
DIN EN 28601 (derived from the EU standard EN 28601, in turn derived from the
ISO standard ISO 8601) and DIN 5008.  The legacy DD.MM.YYYY format has been
deprecated in Germany since 1996.

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           Summary: de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to
                    national standards
           Product: glibc
           Version: 2.3.4
            Status: NEW
          Severity: minor
          Priority: P2
         Component: localedata
        AssignedTo: pere at hungry dot com
        ReportedBy: julian at mehnle dot net
                CC: glibc-bugs at sources dot redhat dot com


http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=773

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[Bug localedata/773] de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[julian at mehnle dot net]

------- Additional Comments From julian at mehnle dot net  2005-02-27 18:56 -------
Created an attachment (id=426)
 --> (http://sources.redhat.com/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=426&action=view)
Patch to make the de_DE locale use the ISO date format

Here is a patch against 2.3.4.

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[Bug localedata/773] de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[pere at hungry dot com]

------- Additional Comments From pere at hungry dot com  2005-04-03 19:59 -------
I reassign this to the de_DE locale author, Ulrich Drepper.


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           What    |Removed                     |Added
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         AssignedTo|pere at hungry dot com      |drepper at redhat dot com
             Status|NEW                         |ASSIGNED


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[Bug localedata/773] de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[drepper at redhat dot com]

------- Additional Comments From drepper at redhat dot com  2005-10-15 00:44 -------
No, the format is the colloquial format.  The ISO format is available through
other means and needs no localization.

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           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|ASSIGNED                    |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX


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[Bug localedata/773] de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[julian at mehnle dot net]

------- Additional Comments From julian at mehnle dot net  2005-11-05 12:06 -------
Sorry to persist, but what's a "colloquial format"?  (Yes, I know what the words 
mean.)  IOW, I don't think the locales are supposed to reflect colloquial 
formats.  They are supposed to reflect _official_, standardized formats.  The 
official, standardized German date format has been the ISO format ever since 
1996.  The fact that, out of inertia and/or ignorance, only few people are 
actually using it, doesn't change that.


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[Bug localedata/773] de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[acolomb at schickhardt dot org]

------- Additional Comments From acolomb at schickhardt dot org  2007-04-15 23:34 -------
I agree with Julian on this. "colloquial" as defined by
www.thefreedictionary.com refers to something
--SNIP--
1.  Characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that
seeks the effect of speech; informal.
2. Relating to conversation; conversational.
--SNIP--

Ulrich is right, nobody uses the new standard format in conversation. But that
is not what standards are made for. Informal speech or text can still use the
descriptive format like "16. April 2007", which is exactly how the date is
pronounced in German speech (where 16. is spoken as the ordinal number
"sechzehnter"). I think any standard you can find out there does not try to
regulate people's everyday life, but formal communication among them. Computers
(and especially applications where date representation is important) are
typically used in formal (legal and business) environments. So this is exactly
the area the standards were designed for. Especially this standard tries to
ensure comformance among several countries in a globally communicating world, so
that everyone knows how to read what someone else meant to say. In my opinion,
the locale definitions in a computer operating system should reflect these
standards that people should have learned in school instead of what they use
(wrongfully) when jotting notes in their calendar.

For the new format itself, it is also more logical (most significant number
first as in the underlying arabic number system), but this argument is probably
not in the scope of this bug. It has already been decided by an international
institution.

The fact that not many people are using the new standard format (after ten
years) should not be a reason not to implement it. Any German native-speaker is
probably aware of the confusion about the new spelling rules in Germany. After
several revisions, I estimate that less people in Germany know the German
spelling rules than those who know how to write the date correctly. Now, was
that a reason for any software project not to accept the new rules and issue
different word lists for new and old (where nobody knows what "old" currently
means) German spelling?

About Ulrich's statement that the ISO 8601 format is available through other
means: I am aware that some people use the en_DK locale for the time and date
locale setting to get ISO 8601 compliance (btw. what do the English language and
Denmark have to do with German date formats?). I have not yet found a consistent
way to even set my locale preferences from my user profile when accessing
different hosts on which I do not have administrator access to change the
system-wide default configuration. If you have any idea about that, please tell
me (I am not using any desktop environment like KDE, GNOME).

To see whether people are frustrated by their dates appearing differently, I
would suggest distributing a second locale with the correct date formats. Btw:
Wasn't that also a "<rant> just another act of bureaucracy that institution is
so notorious for.  </rant>" (from debian-l10n-german mailing list)? Yet another
issue that was not gladly accepted by the public but instantly got focus from
software maintainers--because it was the new standard.

Please reconsider your decision about this change. I hope this post will not
start a flame war, and I apologize if some of my arguments are a little
sarcastic. Just wanted to make my point clear. Will we have to wait for the
Microsoft Corporation to be the first to implement such a little change with
such a big impact, again? :-)

Kind regards,
Andre

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[Bug localedata/773] de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[acolomb at schickhardt dot org]

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                 CC|                            |acolomb at schickhardt dot
                   |                            |org


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[Bug localedata/773] de_DE locale should use ISO date format according to national standards

[vincent+libc at vinc17 dot org]

------- Additional Comments From vincent+libc at vinc17 dot org  2007-06-12 00:33 -------
There's the same problem with the fr_FR locale. Though en_DK provides the
ISO8601 format, this does not mean that one can use it in practice. Indeed, when
the fr_FR locales are installed, en_DK isn't installed automatically, and for
this reason, many machines have fr_FR but not en_DK.

If replacing the colloquial format by the ISO8601 format is wontfix, providing
both formats in standard without needing administrator access should still be valid.

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                 CC|                            |vincent+libc at vinc17 dot
                   |                            |org


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