Make date field internationally compatible

I think this is a duplicate of #603408. I'm willing to evaluate patches, but we don't have time to figure out how to make these changes. Marking both of these as postponed.

#603408: Internationalization goes beyond what's mentioned here: time format and hard coded currency ($) are mentioned there. I will close this issue to continue internationalization, here.

I won't be able to provide patches, though, because I'm not a programmer, I translate mostly.

Remember that this things are essential for using the module outside of the USA.

It's not that I'm against making MERCI an internationalized module. But just like you're not a programmer, I'm not familiar with the correct way to internationalize dates and currency. I could hack it, but that would probably cause more problems in the future. Even if this documentation for best practices exists somewhere, I really don't have time to make these changes.

Unfortunately, I think these issues are going to sit until someone with the development skills needs it done.

Why don't you allow configuring field_merci_date? This is already implemented in the Date module.

Getting the CCK UI to recognize locked fields is something we pushed to have added to CCK. AFAIK, to unlock that you'll need to make that change in the database.

The reason why we locked that (along with other core fields we create as part of the Open Media configurations) is that we know that our modules work when the fields are configured the way we have them. I really don't know if MERCI will work if you change the way field_merci_date is configured. If it turns out it works, we can add an option to change that setting during the initial configuration.

Yes, I see the potential problems.

I've only changed the input format of the date field, and this works just fine, thanks!

Great. I'll change MERCI so the date format on that field matches the site's on install.

Yes, that'll go a long way.

The attached patch takes the site's $short_date_format at installation time instead of the hard-coded U.S. format.

There's another date setting that makes me uneasy: the Time zone handling. D6's time zone handling is broken, and if I want my site to display the correct local time, I have to change the time zone to adjust to daylight savings time (maybe there's a better way, but I haven't found it yet...). This works fine if "No time zone conversion" is selected, but you have "Site's time zone."

Because of that I'll still have to unlock the field and change the Time zone handling...

This issue is now resolved in salvis's larger internationalization patch.

No, these are two separate issues. The patch here serves only to localize the date field on the node/add and node/NID/edit forms (it affects merci.install only).

The purpose of the other patch (merci.module only!) was to internationalize/localize the time labels on the cool graph and it grew a bit to include fixes for various bugs in that area, but it doesn't do anything with the date field.

(I take care to submit meaningful pieces and I'd like to contribute some more, but as you can see there's confusion if I submit a second patch before a first one is committed, so the time it takes to commit a patch severely limits what I can contribute. — I'm not criticizing here, just observing.)