Why the month abbreviation of date format in Polish language is Roman numerals?

[kamilcukrowski]

Libreoffice uses Roman numerals for MMM month abbreviation when formatting dates:

I am using:

Version: 7.5.5.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 50(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.4; UI render: default; VCL: kf5 (cairo+xcb)
Locale: pl-PL (pl_PL.UTF-8); UI: pl-PL
7.5.5-1
Calc: threaded

The LC_TIME locale category for pl_PL.UTF-8 is:

$ locale -k LC_TIME
abday="nie;pon;wto;śro;czw;pią;sob"
day="niedziela;poniedziałek;wtorek;środa;czwartek;piątek;sobota"
abmon="sty;lut;mar;kwi;maj;cze;lip;sie;wrz;paź;lis;gru"
mon="stycznia;lutego;marca;kwietnia;maja;czerwca;lipca;sierpnia;września;października;listopada;grudnia"
am_pm=";"
d_t_fmt="%a, %-d %b %Y, %T"
d_fmt="%d.%m.%Y"
t_fmt="%T"
t_fmt_ampm=""
era=
era_year=""
era_d_fmt=""
alt_digits=
era_d_t_fmt=""
era_t_fmt=""
time-era-num-entries=0
time-era-entries="n"
week-ndays=7
week-1stday=19971130
week-1stweek=4
first_weekday=2
first_workday=2
cal_direction=1
timezone=""
date_fmt="%a, %-d %b %Y, %T %Z"
time-codeset="UTF-8"
alt_mon="styczeń;luty;marzec;kwiecień;maj;czerwiec;lipiec;sierpień;wrzesień;październik;listopad;grudzień"
ab_alt_mon="sty;lut;mar;kwi;maj;cze;lip;sie;wrz;paź;lis;gru"

The “abmon” of pl_PL.UTF-8 has a proper list of shorted month names. Yet, libreoffice does not use them.

Is this a bug? Why does libreoffice uses roman letters for MMM date formatting and not “abmon” from locale month abbreviation? Is there anything I can check or change? Thanks!

[erAck]

Because the creators of the Polish locale data for LibreOffice (note that LC_TIME is not inherited) decided so. See its pl_PL.xml definition. Apparently it is/was a common thing to write Roman numerals? Or MS-Excel did? Is it not? Anymore?

[kamilcukrowski]

Not at all, I do not think I met anyone who would ever use Roman numerals to represent dates. I’m Polish native, 30 year. Is there a manual to create pull request?

[erAck]

This Development/gerrit/SubmitPatch - The Document Foundation Wiki but that requires a full checkout of the huge repository, see https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/source-code/ .

However, question remains whether suddenly changing it is a good idea, there was a reason why the Roman numerals were chosen, having dug around revealed this old OOo request, and a change might also interrupt document calculation evaluating number formatted month names (though bad practice anyway). We should anyhow have a bug / request for enhancement filed, please do so, and then I’d also ask the localization (l10n) list for opinion.

[michaldybczak]

If I recall, as I was a kid, roman letters were used for months (not exclusively), but not anymore, since 30 years or so… Romans letters look weird on business documents, sites, etc. Everybody will understand them, but it’s not a typical way of depicting a month. If not numerical (02, 03, etc.) then a shortened version of a month is also good.

In the newest LO version, there are also numerical versions of the date, but the roman letters remain in pivot tables, which is super weird. Because options for pivot tables are limited, is there any way to change it manually?