Bug 314056 - Date formatting in group headers difficult to localize
Summary: Date formatting in group headers difficult to localize
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: kmail2
Classification: Applications
Component: message list (show other bugs)
Version: 5.3.0
Platform: Other Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: kdepim bugs
URL: http://tommi.legisign.org/pic/kmail2_...
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-01-29 08:44 UTC by Tommi Nieminen
Modified: 2016-09-25 11:08 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


Attachments
Screenshot from KMail (43.30 KB, image/png)
2016-09-24 18:25 UTC, Tommi Nieminen
Details

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Description Tommi Nieminen 2013-01-29 08:44:25 UTC
The date formatting in the group headers of KMail’s message list is not fully localizable.

In English, the names for weekdays and months are in title case (“Friday”, ”November”). The program seems to rely on this. However, in Finnish and many other languages, these names are usually in lowercase (”perjantai” = Friday, ”marraskuu” = November).

Also in English, month + year or a weekday name might stand for the temporal location by itself: “Friday” can be both the base form and the adverb meaning “on this date”. This is not true for most languages. So for example in Finnish, the weekday name is “perjantai” but things happening Friday happen “perjantaina”.

Now see the screenshot in the URL attached. When the message list is grouped by date, you would get a nicely formatted list of time points in English (”Friday”, ”Last week”, ”Two weeks ago”, ”November 2012”) but not in languages where the English expectations don’t hold (”perjantai” should be ”Perjantaina”, ”marraskuu 2012” should be ”Marraskuussa 2012”, and so on).

I think KMail should not blindly rely on the date strings from KDE’s datetime settings. First, KMail should make sure of the right capitalization. Second, the datetime strings, once fetched, should still be mentioned in the .po files so they could be further formatted.

Reproducible: Always
Comment 1 Denis Kurz 2016-09-24 18:06:32 UTC
This bug has only been reported for versions before 4.14, which have been unsupported for at least two years now. Can anyone tell if this bug still present?

If noone confirms this bug for a Framework-based version of kmail2 (version 5.0 or later, as part of KDE Applications 15.12 or later), it gets closed in about three months.
Comment 2 Tommi Nieminen 2016-09-24 18:25:50 UTC
Created attachment 101258 [details]
Screenshot from KMail

This shows KMail 5.3.0 in threaded view as it is localized in Finnish.
Comment 3 Tommi Nieminen 2016-09-24 18:29:32 UTC
(Oops, sorry, didn’t know the Add attachment would send the message at once without returning to the editor.)

As can be seen in my attachment (a PNG screenshot), the bug (or feature) is still there in KMail 5.3.0, KDE Frameworks 5.26.0 etc. The aggregation labels begin with mixed case: Tänään (today), maanantaina (Monday), Viime viikolla (Last week) because some of the labels are localized in KMail’s .po file (Tänään, Viime viikolla) where the localizer can capitalize them but some or taken from elsewhere (the weekdays, month names etc.) where they really should be uncapitalized for most use cases.
Comment 4 Denis Kurz 2016-09-25 11:08:57 UTC
Tommi, thank you for your feedback. Setting to confirmed in 5.3.0.