Additional French Time Patterns ?
Patrick Andries
patrick.andries at xcential.com
Tue May 5 12:54:51 CDT 2015
I believe the current short form (HH:mm) in French is not the most
common. Typographical reference books and common good quality web sites
(French railways for instance) attest to it. I also queried a little bit
around and I tend to agree with these formats, sent to me by a
colleague, as the French modern default :
«
* 12 h 54 s'il n'y a pas de secondes (usage très courant) ;
* 12:54:02[,123] avec les secondes [et fraction] (usage plus technique).
»
The medium form would thus be left untouched (HH:mm:ss).
It would be nice if alternate formats could be supported, but if the
short form can be modified this would be less of an issue.
As far as the am/pm notation is concerned, as long as the strings "am"
and "pm" are not displayed in French, I'm fine. I'm afraid of them
creeping up by default. I suspect the longer forms (du matin/de
l'après-midi/du soir), once known and available to programmers will be
useful in French. (Although Locale-Specific Periods may be difficult to
get perfectly right: the notion of "night" may depend on the sun having
set and thus vary according to the seasons and the latitude ;-) Let me
reassure you, I'm not asking for those to be taken into account.)
P. A.
Le 05/mai/2015 08:52, Mark Davis ☕️ a écrit :
> Those are good comments. Very briefly, what is there for French should
> be the most common, customary form; if not, we should change it. We
> could also offer different formats for time and date ('alt' forms).
> However, our immediate target is programmer APIs, since that is how
> these formats will be selected and eventually shown to users. That
> means that the options have to make sense across languages, since few
> programs will want to be littered with specialized calls. People don't
> want to see in their code the equivalent of "if it is French and I'm
> displaying in a train station, use ALT5, while if it is Kazakh and I'm
> displaying in a movie theater use ALT3, ..."
>
> We faced a similar problem with casing, and ended up developing the
> casing context. Rolling that out has taken many releases, so we're
> still not done with that.
>
> I'm not saying that it can't be done, but rather that we haven't yet
> got a good model for how to make the work that would go into alternate
> forms be useful.
>
> As far as the am/pm goes, we are rolling out new dayperiod support. It
> is targetted mostly at languages that use different periods than AM/PM
> or 24 hour, but there is support for longer or shorter forms. Cf.
> http://cldr.unicode.org/translation/date-time-names#TOC-Day-Periods-AM-and-PM-
>
>
> Mark <https://google.com/+MarkDavis>
> /
> /
> /— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —/
> //
>
> On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 8:00 AM, Patrick Andries
> <patrick.andries at xcential.com <mailto:patrick.andries at xcential.com>>
> wrote:
>
> I also noticed the usage of AM and PM here for French :
> http://st.unicode.org/cldr-apps/v#/fr/Gregorian/5c6d3896851453de
>
> This is not at all customary in French.
>
> This official reference in Quebec says that if the AM/PM need to
> be specified it should be *« du matin*» and « de*l’après-midi* ».
> But this is more how one speaks than how one writes in official
> documents (which nearly always use the 24 hour clock).
>
> http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?th=2&id=1516
> http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=2718
>
> P. A.
>
>
>
> Le 01/mai/2015 13:53, Steven R. Loomis a écrit :
>> Patrick, some good comments, if it does not get traction on this
>> list please file a cldr bug thanks.
>>
>> Enviado desde nuestro iPhone.
>>
>> El may 1, 2015, a las 10:45 AM, Patrick Andries
>> <patrick.andries at xcential.com
>> <mailto:patrick.andries at xcential.com>> escribió:
>>
>>> About : http://demo.icu-project.org/icu-bin/locexp?d_=en&_=fr
>>> (Date & Time Patterns)
>>>
>>> It has been a long time since I thought I should mention that I
>>> find the time patterns for French a bit too simplistic and
>>> English-like.
>>>
>>> Well, it really depends what the patterns are used for. I wonder
>>> how CLDR could offer more flexibility to French localizers so
>>> that they could easily use different time formats from the
>>> current ones, if they so wish. "Traditional French time
>>> patterns", let me call them.
>>>
>>> For hours indicated on schedules (in front of churches, on train
>>> time table, on a log, in correspondence, etc.), the recommended
>>> way is to write "10 h 20" or "23 h 15", for instance. My spell
>>> checker (Antidote) always reminds me of this when I quote an
>>> email message and suggests me to change English styled times
>>> (12:34) into French styled times (12 h 34).
>>>
>>> It is a bit different for running time displayed very quickly to
>>> show, for instance, the precise elapsed time. There, we have got
>>> accustomed to formats like 18:28:38,8365 (best with a comma
>>> decimal separator), but it is not the original French format
>>> (see below).
>>>
>>> Admittedly, not all sources agree on the precise usage (zero
>>> suppression for instance and what to do when seconds are mentioned).
>>>
>>> But here is an overview of some typographical style guides :
>>> Sources :
>>>
>>> See "heure" entry in Lexique des règles typographiques en usage
>>> à l'Imprimerie nationale (Paris, France). "Le train de 8 h 47".
>>> I can quote more from/scan the page if necessary.
>>>
>>> See entries "402 Durée" (4 h 04) "412 Heure" (8 h 17, 11 h, 0 h
>>> 15, 17 h 07' 02'' zero suppressed in duration it says there : 93
>>> h 3 ' 8'') in Guide du typographe roman (Lausanne, Switzerland).
>>>
>>> See entry "écritures des heures" in Le Ramat de la typographie
>>> (Saint-Lambert, Québec, Canada). Usage is to use "h" with hours
>>> every time date is written in letters : le 1er mai 1997 à 16 h
>>> 05". Suggests writing 06:00 or even 0600 for time tables (air
>>> plane leaving at such a time). For durations: 6 h 5 min (with
>>> the leading zero suppressed).
>>>
>>> See
>>> http://reseauaffairesplus.com/francisation/regles-d-usage/redaction/-criture_de_l-heure-.html
>>>
>>> See SNCF (French Railways) :
>>> http://www.voyages-sncf.com/billet-train/horaires, although it
>>> is missing a space before and after the "h". But are computer
>>> generated strings a reference ? ;-) I only mention this very
>>> popular web site to show that this usage is alive and not
>>> "obsolete".
>>>
>>> Patrick
>>>
>>>
>>> <iiaijeac.png>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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