Bug 25119 - Change Czech weekday names to lowercase
Summary: Change Czech weekday names to lowercase
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: glibc
Classification: Unclassified
Component: localedata (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: 2.40
Assignee: Mike FABIAN
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2019-10-19 21:50 UTC by Jan Slaný
Modified: 2024-06-11 10:43 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Host:
Target:
Build:
Last reconfirmed: 2024-06-11 00:00:00
fweimer: security-


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Jan Slaný 2019-10-19 21:50:08 UTC
Hello,

in the Czech locale data (cs_CZ), weekday names in 'abday' and 'day' are currently capitalized. However, orthography rules demand them to be all lowercase. General usage conforms to this rule. The capitalized version is almost non-existent and the Czech Language Institute discourages its use.

As an example, consider the following text on formatting dates by the Czech Language Institute (see the italicized text):
http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?id=810

The relevant CLDR data is here, showing the lowercase names both in full and abbreviated form:
https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/36/summary/cs.html#2079

I can supply the patch if required.

Thanks for considering the issue.
Comment 1 Jan Slaný 2019-10-19 21:55:20 UTC
I'm sorry, the linked article contains only examples of month days. The following article explicitly states that lowercase should be used and provides an example,
see the third line from the bottom ("pondělí, úterý").
Comment 2 Jan Slaný 2019-10-19 21:56:08 UTC
Here is the article:
http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?id=180
Comment 3 Rafal Luzynski 2019-10-25 19:41:32 UTC
Thank you for the report. You don't have to write a patch but you can if you want. CLDR confirms what you said and this is sufficient for us.

However, one final question. I have just checked and I can see that the uppercased weekday names in Czech have been there from the beginning. My guess is that this is to workaround the issue: the weekday names tend to appear in the beginning of date formats where it is better to have them uppercased. So the question is: are you sure you want this change? Have you consulted this with anyone else?
Comment 4 Jan Slaný 2019-10-28 11:40:30 UTC
I haven't consulted this with the maintainers. The last change mentioned in the file header is from the year 2000 and I don't really know whom to contact. Is there any maintainers list I can check?

You are right in guessing that the weekday mostly appears in the beginning of a date format. I am aware that the capitalized version may be desired in some cases, but these are limited to the beginnings of titles or sentences. The current solution prevents us from writing proper sentences like "Today is Friday, the first of November", which requires a lowercase version of the weekday in Czech.

In short, I feel that the decision whether to capitalize or not should really be left upon the author of the text.
Comment 5 Rafal Luzynski 2020-01-25 22:53:23 UTC
(In reply to Jan Slaný from comment #4)
> I haven't consulted this with the maintainers. The last change mentioned in
> the file header is from the year 2000 and I don't really know whom to
> contact. Is there any maintainers list I can check?

I have just contacted (off-line) a Czech software translator and we are going to discuss this issue more thoroughly.

> You are right in guessing that the weekday mostly appears in the beginning
> of a date format. I am aware that the capitalized version may be desired in
> some cases, but these are limited to the beginnings of titles or sentences.
> The current solution prevents us from writing proper sentences like "Today
> is Friday, the first of November", which requires a lowercase version of the
> weekday in Czech.

This is a case we discussed in another bug report.  Your example is a complete sentence translation and my answer is: no, glibc' strftime function is not supposed to support this complex cases.  Its purpose is to format dates.  If you need a complete sentence you need an automatic translation software. :-)

> In short, I feel that the decision whether to capitalize or not should
> really be left upon the author of the text.

True, this is reported as bug 21370 but we don't yet have a solution.
Comment 6 Petr Kovar 2020-01-31 11:08:42 UTC
I(In reply to Rafal Luzynski from comment #3)
> However, one final question. I have just checked and I can see that the
> uppercased weekday names in Czech have been there from the beginning. My
> guess is that this is to workaround the issue: the weekday names tend to
> appear in the beginning of date formats where it is better to have them
> uppercased. So the question is: are you sure you want this change? Have you
> consulted this with anyone else?

As a Czech translator asked by Rafal to comment on this, I agree the change requested would sadly break the grammar for strings where the weekday name is at the first position. We have no control over sentence context here, so a proper fix indeed seems to be to introduce another flag.
Comment 7 Mike FABIAN 2023-11-21 16:01:13 UTC
Similar issue for Italian: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=28643
Comment 8 Mike FABIAN 2023-11-21 16:01:41 UTC
I am not sure what should be done here.
Comment 9 Mike FABIAN 2024-06-11 10:38:23 UTC
(In reply to Jan Slaný from comment #0)
> Hello,
> 
> in the Czech locale data (cs_CZ), weekday names in 'abday' and 'day' are
> currently capitalized. However, orthography rules demand them to be all
> lowercase. General usage conforms to this rule. The capitalized version is
> almost non-existent and the Czech Language Institute discourages its use.
> 
> As an example, consider the following text on formatting dates by the Czech
> Language Institute (see the italicized text):
> http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?id=810
> 
> The relevant CLDR data is here, showing the lowercase names both in full and
> abbreviated form:
> https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/36/summary/cs.html#2079
> 
> I can supply the patch if required.
> 
> Thanks for considering the issue.

This is OK as we want to be in sync with CLDR as much as possible.
Comment 11 Mike FABIAN 2024-06-11 10:39:37 UTC
Tested the patch, works:

$ sudo chroot /var/lib/mock/fedora-40-x86_64/root/
bash-5.2# LC_ALL=cs_CZ.UTF-8 locale -k day 
day="neděle;pondělí;úterý;středa;čtvrtek;pátek;sobota"
bash-5.2# LC_ALL=cs_CZ.UTF-8 locale -k abday 
abday="ne;po;út;st;čt;pá;so"
bash-5.2#
Comment 12 Sourceware Commits 2024-06-11 10:40:05 UTC
The master branch has been updated by Mike Fabian <mfabian@sourceware.org>:

https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=10733d6a72381a54644e16094c39ca7540660a59

commit 10733d6a72381a54644e16094c39ca7540660a59
Author: Mike FABIAN <mfabian@redhat.com>
Date:   Mon Jun 10 19:54:42 2024 +0200

    localedata: Lowercase day and abday in cs_CZ
    
    Resolves: BZ # 25119
    
    Also to sync with CLDR
Comment 13 Mike FABIAN 2024-06-11 10:43:10 UTC
Fixed in glibc master