Issue 54774

Summary:	Bad user experience when entering dates in Thai locale
Product:	Internationalization	Reporter:	jjc
Component:	code	Assignee:	AOO issues mailing list <issues>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	Trivial
Priority:	P3	CC:	falko.tesch, hin.stone, issues, markpeak, ooo
Version:	680m130
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Issue Type:	ENHANCEMENT	Latest Confirmation in:	---
Developer Difficulty:	---
Issue Depends on:	55938
Issue Blocks:	41707

Description jjc 2005-09-19 01:16:56 UTC

In Thailand, the Buddhist calendar is more commonly used than the Gregorian
calendar.  Year 2005 in the Gregorian calendar is year 2548 in the Buddhist
calendar.  The Thai locale uses [~buddhist]D/M/YY as the default short date
format (formatindex=18).  In Calc, if the user enters a date as 19/10/2005, it
will by default be displayed as 19/10/48. So far so good.  However, if the user
now enters a date as 19/10/2548, it will be treated as the year 19/10/2548 in
the Gregorian calendar, which is 19/10/3091 in the Buddhist era, and thus be
displayed as 19/10/91. The overall result is that by default a Thai user is
required all the time to mentally translate between dates in the Buddhist
calendar and dates in the Gregorian calendar.  Obviously this is not good.

The Thai version of Excel has the same problem if a cell uses a Buddhist
calendar date format.  However, the problem is less serious because by default
Excel uses a Gregorian calendar date format, and so the problem will only arise
if the user manually chooses a Buddhist calendar date format.

There would seem to be two possible approaches:

- don't use a Buddhist calendar date format as the default in Calc; however,
simply changing the Thai locale data would be problematic because using the
Buddhist calendar date format as the default is the right thing to do in other
parts of OOo

- introduce some intelligence about the calendar with respect to which years are
interpreted, rather than always treating dates as being in the Gregorian
calendar; this would be analagous to the current intelligence about how two
digit date years are entered; for example, interpret dates between 30 and 75 as
being between 2530 and 2575 in the Buddhist calendar

Comment 1 ooo 2005-09-19 12:26:07 UTC

Hi James,

This is because the th_TH locale data applied with issue 43766 defined
Gregorian to be the default calendar. If you changed

<Calendar unoid="gregorian" default="true">
...
<Calendar unoid="buddhist" default="false">

to

<Calendar unoid="gregorian" default="false">
...
<Calendar unoid="buddhist" default="true">

all date input would be evaluated according to the Buddhist calendar
instead. To display Gregorian dates the date format codes would need
a leading [~gregorian] calendar switch though. The
Tools.Options.OOo.General two digits year could then be set to something
around 2500. As a default Buddhist calendar is probably not a thoroughly
tested scenario, especially not in applications other than Calc,
I suggest to do some testing before finally changing this.

I therefore reassign this issue to you to provide adapted and tested
locale data, please reassign within the Thai team.

Thanks
  Eike

Comment 2 ooo 2005-09-19 12:28:57 UTC

Reassigning, see last comment. Please provide changed tested locale data and
reassign to me when ready.

Comment 3 hin 2005-09-22 07:57:10 UTC

Hi Eike,

I change th_TH locale data follow in your advice. Now I can enter calendar in
Buddhist era but I have a problem with number of digit of year section. 

If I set locale to THAI and set format of cell to 'DD/MM/YYYY'. I enter date in
'15/5/48', the output is '15/05/1948' so it wrong. In the others hand, I enter
date in '15/5/2548', The output is '15/05/2548' so it right.

If I enter 2 digit in Buddhist era, the OOo will recognize year section to 4
digit by try to insert number '19' or '20' at begin of year section. In Buddhist
era, OOo should be insert number '25' at begin of year section.

Regard,
Hin

Comment 4 jjc 2005-09-22 12:17:22 UTC

There's an option you can set under Tools|Options under the
OpenOffice.org/General  category which says how two digit years should be
interpreted. I guess we would need to configure the Thai locale to automatically
set that appropriately.  Not sure how we do that.

Comment 5 jjc 2005-10-13 18:30:55 UTC

We need to solve the two-digit year problem before we can make the default
calendar be Buddhist.  See issue 55938.

Comment 6 Rob Weir 2013-07-30 02:24:36 UTC

Reset assignee on issues not touched by assignee in more than 2000 days.