Re: MATE Clock Panel App Glitch

Hi Stuart,

Yeah I noticed when I was working with this yesterday evening, which lead me to another question about building from the source tree, but I digress...

Thanks.

On Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 3:06 AM Stuart Henderson <stu@spacehopper.org> wrote:

this diff is for libc rather than ports. it will definitely fix this problem, the question is whether it's acceptable to commit it like this.

-- 

  Sent from a phone, apologies for poor formatting.

On 27 November 2025 20:52:48 Claudio Miranda <quadsix50@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stuart,

I can give this a try this weekend if it's not already applied. I've

got the ports tree checked out via CVS on my laptop to give this a

test and report back.

Regards,

-Claudio

On Wed, Nov 26, 2025 at 5:10 AM Stuart Henderson

<stu.lists@spacehopper.org> wrote:

[This message has also been posted to gmane.os.openbsd.misc.]

On 2025-11-26, Claudio Miranda <quadsix50@gmail.com> wrote:

--0000000000001fa64a0644755b51

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Greetings and apologies for the delayed reply to the list and to Carson.

moving to tech@ and CC'ing maintainer

So, I finally had a chance to look at this, and it's actually "_I" (as

in "India") and not a lowercase L as I originally thought (changing

the application font in MATE to Serif confirmed this). While not

directly related to what I found, this bug report for the clock applet

gave me a hint as to what exactly the typo is, and it looks like it

should be "%_I" (as in "India"). The percent sign is missing, hence

the time showing up as "_I:ss PM" (where "ss" is seconds which

displays correctly on the applet).

https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/1451

I've only seen this happen on the OpenBSD port of the MATE Clock

applet. Checked MATE Clock on FreeBSD and Fedora (where I run MATE

Desktop) and those display correctly.

to fix that issue, mate-panel changed from one strftime extension

(%l, supported by OpenBSD but not musl libc) to another (%_I, glibc

extension, supported by musl libc, FreeBSD and reportedly AIX, Solaris)

the %_ extension is from a set of three modifiers which specify padding

behaviour instead of the default for the following format character:

%0K - like %K but pad numbers with zeros

%_K - like %K but pad numbers with spaces

%-K - like %K but do not pad numbers

patching this in mate-panel is a pain because the strftime strings

are used as translated strings (i.e. changing to the common local

format where available) so a bunch of .po files would need patches.

taking a cue from libc's "support" for %E/%O (C99 locale modifiers

which are recognised but ignored) here's a diff to ignore the modifiers

so at least we'd get something sensible printed in these cases. (if

testing with date(1) note that it's statically linked). would this

or something like it make sense?

Index: time/strftime.c

===================================================================

RCS file: /cvs/src/lib/libc/time/strftime.c,v

diff -u -p -r1.34 strftime.c

--- time/strftime.c     16 May 2025 14:24:39 -0000      1.34

+++ time/strftime.c     26 Nov 2025 10:06:55 -0000

@@ -477,6 +477,16 @@ label:

                        pt = _fmt(Locale->date_fmt, t, pt, ptlim,

                                warnp);

                        continue;

+                       case '0':

+                       case '-':

+                       case '_':

+                               /*

+                                * GNU libc extensions.

+                                * 0 should explicitly specify zero for padding.

+                                * - should avoid padding numerical outputs.

+                                * _ should xplicitly specify space for padding.

+                                */

+                               goto label;

                case '%':

                /*

                ** X311J/88-090 (4.12.3.5): if conversion char is

Index: time/strptime.c

===================================================================

RCS file: /cvs/src/lib/libc/time/strptime.c,v

diff -u -p -r1.34 strptime.c

--- time/strptime.c     20 Nov 2025 10:59:56 -0000      1.34

+++ time/strptime.c     26 Nov 2025 10:06:55 -0000

@@ -132,6 +132,15 @@ literal:

        break;

        /*

+                * "Padding" modifiers. Not handled but set the appropriate

+                * flag and start over again.

+                */

+               case '_':       /* "%_?" pad numbers with spaces. */

+               case '0':       /* "%0?" pad numbers with zeros. */

+               case '-':       /* "%-?" do not pad numbers. */

+                       goto again;

+

+               /*

         * "Alternative" modifiers. Just set the appropriate flag

         * and start over again.

         */