TL;DR
For date and time formats AngularJS relies on CLDR.
The problem
Few days ago, I was trying to display an instant in time with Angular and its date filter.
After installing angular-i18n and including the appropriate file in the index.html, the string was different, although not in an expected way. It was displayed using a dot (.) instead of a colon (:) as a time separator (instead of 14:37 it would display 14.37)
A quick glance revealed that the referenced file (angular-locale_sr-latn-rs.js) has time formats defined with dot. My first thought was that it’s a bit weird that such a widely used library has a bug. But then, for a long time Windows had almost proper formats for Serbian locale. Until recently, date format was missing the final dot, so instead of 18.08.2016. a date would be formatted as 18.08.2016
As a quick fix I referenced sr-latn-ba which has the proper separator.
Now, a minor thing like this can surely be fixed properly by contributing to Angular repository.
The not-solutions
Without giving it much thought, after quick search, I somehow land on bower-angular-i18n which looks about right. Until I notice that there are pull request months old. Why could that be?
A comment in one of them says:
This repo is for distribution on npm and bower. The source for this module is in the main AngularJS repo. Please file issues and pull requests against that repo.
Ah, no problem. I’ll just go there.
At AngularJS repository, after a search for i18n pull requests:
Localization Issues: Angular.js uses the Google Closure I18N library to generate its own I18N files (the ngLocale module).
Hmmm.. Ok then.
A search in Closure Library yields another closed PR:
A paragraph on that page says the following:
Closure Library’s i18n files that contain locale data (e.g., currency symbols, date time patterns, etc.) are auto-generated based on data from CLDR. If you see an incorrect symbol, please first check CLDR
Will this ever end?
CLDR
Sure enough, CLDR, in an XML file with Serbian locale data, defines time formats which use the dot instead of colon.
If only it was obvious what one needs to do to fix the omission. After taking a wrong turn and trying CLDR Survey Tool, it becomes clear that CLDR : Bug Tracking is the proper way forward.
Finally, here is the submitted ticket. We’ll see how it goes.