https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19412

--- Comment #23 from Ryan Kaldari <[email protected]> ---
This isn't a trivial problem to fix, especially since, as Huji mentions, some
month names are associated with different calendars (or even multiple
calendars). Take "Nisan" for example. In the Hebrew calendar, Nisan is
sometimes month 7 and sometimes month 8. However, Nisan is month 1 in the
Assyrian calendar (and the Hebrew ecclesiastic calendar). We would need to add
explicit flags for not only language, but also calendar, which would then
necessitate considering all the different possible ways of writing dates and
times in each language and calendar, as well as how to deal with the almost
infinite number of ambiguous cases. Even the relatively "simple" case that we
currently support, English-only Gregorian calendar, is fraught with bugs and
inconsistencies. Just imagine multiplying that by 300 languages and then
multiplying again by the 50 or so calendars currently in use around the world
(some of which are quite difficult to convert to the Gregorian calendar). Not
to mention that some languages support multiple number systems.

In the history of computer programming, no one has ever solved this problem,
and honestly I doubt anyone ever will. Even a modest attempt would probably
need its own open source project separate from MediaWiki.

My suggestion for a practical solution would be to distribute the problem and
have each wiki write their own Lua module for translating their particular
language and calendars into ISO 8601 compatible date-time formats. Each module
could then be used to provide the input for #time.

Recommend WONTFIX.

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