Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yaggo | Hacker News Reader

> Many english speakers use en_US by default since it's the thing that breaks the least, so using the native format of the system is not useful.

Sorry, I'm not following you. Every application should use the format defined in OS settings, that's the point of the system setting, why should browser be an exception?

View on HN

Most people intentionally set their locale wrong, to en_US, because a lot of apps simply do not have actual locale support, but try to do something when presented with a non-en_US locale.

I know many like me, who also just prefers the application language to be in English. From decades of using English I have no idea what many terms are in my native language, native terms are much harder to google, and many applications are also poorly translated. But that doesn't mean I want everything in English, especially not date/time formats.

Language and locale (how you want your date or numbers formatted) are two different things. You can set them separately.

I can set them, all right. Somebody else then needs to read them, though...and has to take care not to assume that LANG===LC_TIME===LC_DATE. Sadly, I do not see that happening; in most cases, the apps are picking one locale setting, seemingly at random, and using it for all the other locale settings.

I cannot remember an app that did not support dd/mm/yyyy format. It is the first thing a non-US English speaker will complain about.

dd/mm/yyyy is indeed what I'll complain about: that's as unclear as possible. Did the author mean dd.mm.yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy?

DD/MM/YYYY is more widely used than the US-only MM/DD/YYYY. Ultimately, ISO 8061 (YYYY-MM-DD) is the only really usable one.

Nope, you're thinking of DD.MM.YYYY - using the USian separators with the European date ordering is a recipe for trouble. Agree on the ISO form.

We use DD/MM/YYYY in Australia. I can definitely agree that it adds to the confusion. ;)

Last time I used Peoplesoft it had everything in American date format.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com