TLDR: bremner: is AM/PM an anglo thing or does the Rest Of Canada also like computers to show sane (sorry, i mean 24h) time as the Rest Of The Planet? :)
On 2025-12-07 12:40:45, Aurelien Jarno wrote: > Hi, > > On 2025-12-05 11:55, Antoine Beaupre wrote: >> Package: locales >> Version: 2.41-12 >> Severity: normal >> Tags: l10n >> >> I am perhaps completely confused about this, but it seems to me the >> time format in libc is incorrect, as far as "time in Canada" is >> concerned: >> >> anarcat@angela:~> LC_TIME=en_CA date >> Fri 05 Dec 2025 11:30:46 AM EST >> anarcat@angela:~> LC_TIME=en_US date >> Fri Dec 5 11:30:49 AM EST 2025 >> anarcat@angela:~> LC_TIME=fr_FR date >> ven. 05 d. 2025 11:30:56 EST >> anarcat@angela:~> LC_TIME=en_OMGWTF date >> Fri Dec 5 11:31:02 EST 2025 >> >> In the above, you can see the en_CA locale uses an AM/PM suffix like >> en_US, while fr_FR (and a non-existent en_OMGWTF locale) do not have >> that suffix, so correctly show 24h times. > > Yes, that matches what is in the locale data [1]. Note however that the > fr_CA locale uses the 24h time format [2]. As one would expect, yes. >> I believe this is incorrect. >> >> According to Wikipedia[1] >> >> > The Government of Canada recommends using the 24-hour clock to avoid >> > ambiguity, and many industries require it. [...] The 24-hour clock >> > is widely used in contexts such as transportation, medicine, >> > environmental services, and data transmission, "preferable for >> > greater precision and maximum comprehension the world over". Its use >> > is mandatory in parts of the government as an element of the Federal >> > Identity Program, especially in contexts such as signage where >> > speakers of both English and French read the same text. >> >> That said, Wikipedia also says: >> >> > Outside the influence of government style, the 24-hour system is >> > rarely used. The government describes the 24-hour system as >> > "desirable" but does not enforce its use, meaning that the 12-hour >> > clock remains common for oral and informal usage in English-speaking >> > contexts. It is not the recommended style in journalism, for >> > example. > > For a country like Canada, is there any variation between the > French-speaking and English-speaking regions, independently of the > language used? I mean is there any variation between Montreal and > Vancouver for instance? To be honest, I'm not 100% sure about this. I don't live in Vancouver, and while I know folks on the west coast, I haven't *lived* there so I can't tell that much. I feel close enough to Ontario to make that call, I think, but again, It's Complicated: I'm a native french speaker, and that can certainly bias my perspective here. Nevertheless, what I explained below is, I believe, somewhat accurate: people do expect machines to display time in the 24h system, and I find it jarring, and I'm pretty confident other Canadians would concur. But, also, I guess any Debian Developer From Canada could weigh in here. I added bremner in CC, I has been known to have opinions. ;) >> So that might seem to indicate that we should *not* fix this and keep >> the AM/PM format, except Wikipedia *also* says that: >> >> > This situation is similar to the use of the 24-hour clock in the >> > United Kingdom. >> >> [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Canada >> >> But then if you look at the en_GB locale, *that* uses 24h time >> formats: >> >> anarcat@angela:~> LC_TIME=en_UK date >> Fri Dec 5 11:44:05 EST 2025 >> >> So, there's some inconsistency here. I think en_CA, being a british >> colony and still somewhat part of the british empire (and, >> technically, a dominion of the defunct Queen of Canada, Elizabeth II), >> should follow en_GB on that extremely narrow example. >> >> For context, I live in Montreal, Canada, and I prefer 24h times on my >> systems. I am a native French speaker, but am fully fluent in English >> and I've worked most of adult life in English. I've been working in >> computer science for decades at this point and have been involve in >> the earlier days of the GNU gettext project for french translations, I >> think I'm fairly well attuned with the overall "i18n" / "l10n" effort, >> even though I have somewhat given up on that utopia a while back. >> >> In my day job, I communicate with people all over the world who use >> 24h time formats. In fact, 24h time formats make it *much* easier for >> me to schedule meetings with other folks around the world, in >> different timezones, as you can simply compute times with a single 24 >> modulo instead of two 12 modulus. >> >> At home, I *will* certainly say things like "it's three o'clock" (with >> "PM" being implicit), but I certainly prefer to *see* my clocks say >> "15:00". I know it's bizarre, but I find it just completely nuts and >> jarring to see *computers* try to talk like humans. There's context in >> human language, and it's fine if people say "three o'clock" and not >> "fifteen o'clock", that would be bonkers, we know what "three" means >> in the context of the day. >> >> But for time, in computers, using "3:00 PM" is just baroque and >> weird. It feels like we're back under queen victoria and I should be >> shoving coal in my computer to get it faster into the next millenium >> so it can start speaking proper english already. >> >> I originally investigated this as part of what I thought was a bug in >> Nextcloud, a web application that supports calendar features, where >> the date picker because weird at some point. At first, I thought the >> issue was with Nextcloud, and discussed the problem in this issue: >> >> https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/issues/6359 >> >> ... then I thought it was in Firefox, and found *that* issue: >> >> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1532923 >> >> But now, I can reproduce the problem all the way down to date(1), >> which is part of coreutils so, technically, the bug could be filed >> there, but I'd be surprised if the issue was *not* in locales (and >> therefore glibc) at this point. > > Yes, as said above this matches the current locale data [1], so that's > why many software are showing the time in AM/PM format. > > While this can be fixed in a Debian specific, experience shows that > diverging between distribution is just causing more issues. For instance > some testsuite might test output for the en_CA locale against an > expected output, and having difference between distributions just means > that we need to fix that in Debian specific patch. Therefore I think > this needs to be brought upstream first. I am now properly terrified of the consequences of this bug report. :p > You already provided a good explanation about why this should be > changed, do you mind reporting that in the upstream BTS [3]? > Alternatively I can do the proxy, but doing so might be difficult in > case the discussion gets long. Once there is an agreement, I don't mind > submitting the corresponding patch for review on the mailing list. Sure, I'll try to collect my thoughts (and perhaps consensus over a couple more Canadians first, oh boy), and will get back to you. > [1] > https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=localedata/locales/en_CA;h=ca8ac5813abe293bd4a4c730af96d3a512f52539;hb=HEAD#l119 Thanks for confirming this too, BTW, I was kind of going nuts there. I *had* seen line 123 there but figured "this is wrong, surely I have a bug locally and this is not it". :p Also, seems en_CA has been AM/PM since the beginning of the git history there: https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=localedata/locales/en_CA;hb=f5f52655ceb5152d79ca88db5293fa1136969303 haven't checked intermediates, that said. > [2] > https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=localedata/locales/fr_CA;h=93cd0c4c8838b3361bdc8d1c503628c3526f7540;hb=HEAD#l115 Thanks again, a. -- May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey
