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Here's how a non-root user on a Linux system can create, update, and use a personal locale definition. This is useful for getting ISO-8601 time and date formats to be used for date(1) and strftime(3), and in applications like Thunderbird that don't have the sense to allow users to set a strftime-like date/time format themselves.
Changing all the month and day names is straightforward, although not shown here. Note that limitations of the localization routines block deep changes such as implementing a lunar model or the more seasonal hobbit calendar.
If the steps below are followed, using the arbitrarily-created locale name en_US@myISO, the following will display changed date formats in Thunderbird:
$ LOCPATH=~/lib/locale LC_ALL=en_US@myISO thunderbird & $
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It's easy to make a ~/bin/thunderbird-iso script:
#!/bin/sh
LOCPATH=$HOME/lib/locale LC_ALL=en_US@myISO exec thunderbird "$@"
Insure that you have the localedef(1) utility on your system
$ type localedef localedef is hashed (/usr/bin/localedef) $
Verify that your libc supports the LOCPATH environment variable:
$ grep LOCPATH /usr/lib/libc.a Binary file /usr/lib/libc.a matches $
Select a name for your new locale that doesn't collide with any existing ones (the output here is abbreviated):
$ locale -a C POSIX en_US.utf8 $
This example will assume your new locale is named en_US@myISO
;
you can easily choose a locale name other than myISO
.
Make a directory for your locale:
$ mkdir -p ~/lib/locale $ cd ~/lib/locale $
Locate some baseline to start from:
$ cp /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US ~/lib/locale/en_US@myISO.def $
Test compile your clone (still in ~/lib/locale). Note that localedef's first argument does need to be a full pathname unless you will/can install into the system locales area.
$ localedef ~/lib/locale/en_US@myISO < en_US@myISO.def $ ls -FCas en_US@myISO total 284 4 ./ 220 LC_CTYPE 4 LC_MONETARY 4 LC_TELEPHONE 4 ../ 4 LC_IDENTIFICATION 4 LC_NAME 4 LC_TIME 4 LC_ADDRESS 4 LC_MEASUREMENT 4 LC_NUMERIC 16 LC_COLLATE 4 LC_MESSAGES/ 4 LC_PAPER $
Test your date(1) command with (the …
below are elisions):
$ LOCPATH=~/lib/locale LC_ALL=en_US@myISO strace date 2>&1 | grep myISO
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_IDENTIFICATION", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_MEASUREMENT", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_TELEPHONE", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_ADDRESS", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_NAME", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_PAPER", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_MESSAGES", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_MESSAGES/SYS_LC_MESSAGES", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_MONETARY", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_COLLATE", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_TIME", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_NUMERIC", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("…/lib/locale/en_US@myISO/LC_CTYPE", O_RDONLY) = 3
$
If you don't see the open() lines, or they return negatives on the far right, then LOCPATH or LC_ALL isn't working.
Now you can begin editing, probably in the en_US@myISO.def file.
Have a look at the example file at the end of this document, particularly
the entry for data-fmt of "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z %a".
Note that the locale files tend to use encoded forms the text strings,
with each character
becoming its hex equivalent in the form <Udddd>. For
example, a space can be written <U0020>. I noticed that
this encoding can be skipped, just putting the strftime strings
in literally, but it seemed easier to simply restore the encoding
once the string values were tested than to figure out whether
some benefit only came with the special encoding.
To convert, using text
as an example:
$ text2u () {
perl -e 'while(<>) {
chomp;
map { printf("<U%04X>", ord($_)); } split("");
print("\n");
}';
}
$ echo text | text2u
<U0074><U0065><U0078><U0074>
$
$ u2text () {
perl -e 'while(<>) {
s/[<>U]/ /g;
map { printf("%c", hex($_)) ; } split(" ");
print("\n");
}';
}
$ echo '<U0074><U0065><U0078><U0074>' | u2text
text
$
To find out which % codes to use, read the manpage on strftime(3). Note that slashes are not literal in the Uxxxx-coded parts, and are simply line continuation characters.
If you want to apply the results to all of your programs, rather than to particular ones using scripts like the thunderbird-iso, you can. I don't really recommend this because it seems improper to use LC_ALL instead of the more focussed LC_TIME, and this example seems to be lacking something that would allow the finer approach. Regardless, to apply this to your whole environment, you can add LOCPATH and LC_ALL to whichever login dotfile is appropriate to you, probably ~/.bash_profile (since your ~/.bashrc should be relying on some parent process having already read it for its environment variables). This can be complicated in X environments, where it can be challenging to locate the correct startup dotfile which itself should read in ~/.bash_profile or something . Likely candidates are ~/.xsession, ~/.xprofile, etc. If your ~/.bash_profile simply reads your ~/.profile, and if Bourne shell compat matters, you can put this in the latter:
LOCPATH=$HOME/lib/locale ; export LOCPATH ; LC_ALL=en_US@myISO ; export LC_ALL
I created a ~/lib/locale/en_US@myISO.def file, so that dates would appear
in ISO-8601 format, which looked like the below during testing. I didn't
go hardcore with the standard-compliant interstitial T
, as in
2011-01-10T06:21:11-06, but the result is readable and satisfies
my criterion for easy and reliable sorting, even with the dayname
abbreviation included. It would be nice if date(1) had a
specific option to request the combined ISO-8601 version,
instead of needing to write out date +%FT%T%z
(or +%XT%x%z)
.
| +%X | 06:21:01 AM |
|---|---|
| +%x | 10/01/2011 |
| +%r | 06:21:06 AM |
| no args | Sat Jan 1 06:21:11 CST 2011 |
$ LOCPATH=~/lib/locale LC_ALL=en_US@myISO date +%X 06:21:01 $ LOCPATH=~/lib/locale LC_ALL=en_US@myISO date +%x 2011-01-10 $ LOCPATH=~/lib/locale LC_ALL=en_US@myISO date +%r 06:21:06 AM $ LOCPATH=~/lib/locale LC_ALL=en_US@myISO date 2011-01-10 06:21:11 CST Mon $
My en_US@myISO.def file follows. The LC_TIME section is where most of the mods are, in the settings for d_t_fmt, d_fmt, and date_fmt, in order to set ISO-8601 year-first date forms.
This file could certainly be shorter, since other sections can be included by reference, as seen in the LC_COLLATE section. If this were only going to be used to modify, say, the Thunderbird date/time format, then just doing the time section explicity (with the others by reference) and running Thunderbird via a wrapper script containing something like LC_TIME=en_US@myISO thunderbird "$@" would make sense. However, attempts to use it this way failed in my experiments, with only LC_ALL=en_US@myISO working as desired.
It's seems weird that date(1) gets a special date_fmt entry here, since in contrast there are files like /usr/share/locale-langpack/en_US@piglatin/LC_MESSAGES/inkscape.mo. It seems like there should be an option to use something like ~/lib/locales/en_US@myISO/LC_TIME/thunderbird.mo. Of course, that would probably require Thunderbird to do something to activate it, which goes totally against the evident current spirit of that app. Besides, being able to configure strftime strings through Thunderbird's own interface would be preferable, since almost no users will ever create their own locale files.
Lastly, it would nice to set the two values for date_fmt and
and d_t_fmt differently, with one being more comfortably
readable and one being the fullbore ISO-format-with-a-T
variant.
Probably date_fmt should be the human-friendly and d_t_fmt
the standard-conformant one, but that isn't quite certain yet, so
instead they both sit in a middle ground.
Hopefully the following will be useful regardless:
escape_char /
comment_char %
% Locale for English locale in the USA with ISO-8601 LC_TIME
% Contributed by North-Keys [ erlkonig (a t) talisman.org ], 2011
% process with: localedef <targetdir> < <deffile>
LC_IDENTIFICATION
title "English locale for the USA with ISO-8601 LC_TIME"
source "North-Keys"
address ""
contact ""
email ""
tel ""
fax ""
language "English"
territory "USA"
revision "1.0"
date "2011-01-10"
%
category "en_US:2000";LC_IDENTIFICATION
category "en_US:2000";LC_CTYPE
category "en_US:2000";LC_COLLATE
category "en_US:2000";LC_TIME
category "en_US:2000";LC_NUMERIC
category "en_US:2000";LC_MONETARY
category "en_US:2000";LC_MESSAGES
category "en_US:2000";LC_PAPER
category "en_US:2000";LC_NAME
category "en_US:2000";LC_ADDRESS
category "en_US:2000";LC_TELEPHONE
END LC_IDENTIFICATION
LC_CTYPE
copy "en_GB"
END LC_CTYPE
LC_COLLATE
% Copy the template from ISO/IEC 14651
copy "iso14651_t1"
END LC_COLLATE
LC_MONETARY
int_curr_symbol "<U0055><U0053><U0044><U0020>"
currency_symbol "<U0024>"
mon_decimal_point "<U002E>"
mon_thousands_sep "<U002C>"
mon_grouping 3;3
positive_sign ""
negative_sign "<U002D>"
int_frac_digits 2
frac_digits 2
p_cs_precedes 1
int_p_sep_by_space 1
p_sep_by_space 0
n_cs_precedes 1
int_n_sep_by_space 1
n_sep_by_space 0
p_sign_posn 1
n_sign_posn 1
%
END LC_MONETARY
LC_NUMERIC
decimal_point "<U002E>"
thousands_sep "<U002C>"
grouping 3;3
END LC_NUMERIC
LC_TIME
abday "<U0053><U0075><U006E>";"<U004D><U006F><U006E>";/
"<U0054><U0075><U0065>";"<U0057><U0065><U0064>";/
"<U0054><U0068><U0075>";"<U0046><U0072><U0069>";/
"<U0053><U0061><U0074>"
day "<U0053><U0075><U006E><U0064><U0061><U0079>";/
"<U004D><U006F><U006E><U0064><U0061><U0079>";/
"<U0054><U0075><U0065><U0073><U0064><U0061><U0079>";/
"<U0057><U0065><U0064><U006E><U0065><U0073><U0064><U0061><U0079>";/
"<U0054><U0068><U0075><U0072><U0073><U0064><U0061><U0079>";/
"<U0046><U0072><U0069><U0064><U0061><U0079>";/
"<U0053><U0061><U0074><U0075><U0072><U0064><U0061><U0079>"
week 7;19971130;7
first_weekday 1
first_workday 2
abmon "<U004A><U0061><U006E>";"<U0046><U0065><U0062>";/
"<U004D><U0061><U0072>";"<U0041><U0070><U0072>";/
"<U004D><U0061><U0079>";"<U004A><U0075><U006E>";/
"<U004A><U0075><U006C>";"<U0041><U0075><U0067>";/
"<U0053><U0065><U0070>";"<U004F><U0063><U0074>";/
"<U004E><U006F><U0076>";"<U0044><U0065><U0063>"
mon "<U004A><U0061><U006E><U0075><U0061><U0072><U0079>";/
"<U0046><U0065><U0062><U0072><U0075><U0061><U0072><U0079>";/
"<U004D><U0061><U0072><U0063><U0068>";/
"<U0041><U0070><U0072><U0069><U006C>";/
"<U004D><U0061><U0079>";/
"<U004A><U0075><U006E><U0065>";/
"<U004A><U0075><U006C><U0079>";/
"<U0041><U0075><U0067><U0075><U0073><U0074>";/
"<U0053><U0065><U0070><U0074><U0065><U006D><U0062><U0065><U0072>";/
"<U004F><U0063><U0074><U006F><U0062><U0065><U0072>";/
"<U004E><U006F><U0076><U0065><U006D><U0062><U0065><U0072>";/
"<U0044><U0065><U0063><U0065><U006D><U0062><U0065><U0072>"
% 2011-01-10 05:13:52 CST Mon
% Appropriate date and time representation (%c) "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z %a"
d_t_fmt "<U0025><U0059><U002D><U0025><U006D><U002D><U0025><U0064>/
<U0020><U0025><U0048><U003A><U0025><U004D><U003A><U0025><U0053><U0020>/
<U0025><U005A><U0020><U0025><U0061>"
% Appropriate date representation (%x) "%Y-%m-%d"
d_fmt "<U0025><U0059><U002D><U0025><U006D><U002D><U0025><U0064>"
% Appropriate time representation (%X) "%H:%M:%S"
t_fmt "<U0025><U0048><U003A><U0025><U004D><U003A><U0025><U0053>"
% Appropriate AM/PM time representation (%r) "%I:%M:%S %p"
t_fmt_ampm "<U0025><U0049><U003A><U0025><U004D><U003A><U0025><U0053><U0020>/
<U0025><U0070>"
% Strings for AM/PM
am_pm "<U0041><U004D>";"<U0050><U004D>"
% 2011-01-10 05:13:52 CST Mon
% Appropriate date representation (date(1)) "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z %a"
date_fmt "<U0025><U0059><U002D><U0025><U006D><U002D><U0025><U0064>/
<U0020><U0025><U0048><U003A><U0025><U004D><U003A><U0025><U0053><U0020>/
<U0025><U005A><U0020><U0025><U0061>"
END LC_TIME
LC_MESSAGES
yesexpr "<U005E><U005B><U0079><U0059><U005D><U002E><U002A>"
noexpr "<U005E><U005B><U006E><U004E><U005D><U002E><U002A>"
yesstr "<U0059><U0065><U0073>"
nostr "<U004E><U006F>"
END LC_MESSAGES
LC_PAPER
height 279
width 216
END LC_PAPER
LC_NAME
name_fmt "<U0025><U0064><U0025><U0074><U0025><U0067><U0025><U0074>/
<U0025><U006D><U0025><U0074><U0025><U0066>"
name_miss "<U004D><U0069><U0073><U0073><U002E>"
name_mr "<U004D><U0072><U002E>"
name_mrs "<U004D><U0072><U0073><U002E>"
name_ms "<U004D><U0073><U002E>"
END LC_NAME
LC_ADDRESS
postal_fmt "<U0025><U0061><U0025><U004E><U0025><U0066><U0025><U004E>/
<U0025><U0064><U0025><U004E><U0025><U0062><U0025><U004E><U0025><U0068>/
<U0020><U0025><U0073><U0020><U0025><U0065><U0020><U0025><U0072><U0025>/
<U004E><U0025><U0054><U002C><U0020><U0025><U0053><U0020><U0025><U007A><U0025>/
<U004E><U0025><U0063><U0025><U004E>"
country_name "<U0055><U0053><U0041>"
country_post "<U0055><U0053><U0041>"
country_ab2 "<U0055><U0053>"
country_ab3 "<U0055><U0053><U0041>"
country_num 840
country_car "<U0055><U0053><U0041>"
country_isbn 0
lang_name "<U0045><U006E><U0067><U006C><U0069><U0073><U0068>"
lang_ab "<U0065><U006E>"
lang_term "<U0065><U006E><U0067>"
lang_lib "<U0065><U006E><U0067>"
END LC_ADDRESS
LC_TELEPHONE
tel_int_fmt "<U002B><U0025><U0063><U0020><U0028><U0025><U0061><U0029>/
<U0020><U0025><U006C>"
tel_dom_fmt "<U0028><U0025><U0061><U0029><U0020><U0025><U006C>"
int_select "<U0031><U0031>"
int_prefix "<U0031>"
END LC_TELEPHONE
LC_MEASUREMENT
measurement 2
END LC_MEASUREMENT| contact ζωιον |