My apologies if this has been dealt with before but I am a total newbie to Linux - I also hope I have picked the correct forum. I wish to change the date format in KMyMoney to dd/mm/yy though, having trawled various sites for a solution, it seems that I need to change it for KDE overall. As a novice, I have not totally understood the terminology and commands that have been suggested in some of my searches. Could some kind soul tell me in laymanspeak exactly what I need to type into my terminal to get the result I require please ? The nearest I have got is in date --help but various attempts on my part resulted in error reports. I am using KMyMoney 0.8.9 in KDE 3.4.2 on an Eeepc701SD in Advance mode. Curiously, if I right click on the time in the Desktop taskbar, I get a menu which includes date and time format; this is the only item in that menu that doesn't do anything. Any help would be gratefully received.
Geoff

You have to use kcontrol to change the regional settings, there you have the date format.
If you don't have kcontrol or systemsettings, you should install either.

Knowing which distro you use would help us point you the best solution.

Many thanks for your prompt reply. Hmmmm.....you must dread amateurs. Assuming kcontrol to be the Control Centre, (to be certain I typed kcontrol in >Launch>Run), I can get to >General Settings>Date and Time but this only allows me to actually change the date and time and also the time zone (which I have tried as either London or GMT-1). There appears to be no facility for changing the format nor are there any other options listed in the Control Centre. Regarding distros, I thought I had been a good boy and given the system information that might be required. What info should I be providing under distros - is that something to do with distibution references? I'm afraid it gets back to the 'jargon' thing again. Still grateful for your input, of course.

As I use Xubuntu I had to install KDE "Systemsettings" which supercedes Kcontrol. I was then able to set the region to United Kingdom and then all the dates etc in KMyMoney became what was required.

As you probably realise KMyMoney is a KDE application and runs in a KDE environment.

As Hei Ku said, more specific help will probably be forthcoming if you specify what variant of Linux you are running.

I've only been using this machine for a couple of weeks so still trying to fathom out some of its deeper aspects; sorry about the lack of information. The handbooks tell us nothing about the version of Linux used but I have read somewhere that, out of the box, it uses a version called Xandros adapted by Asus which has a very simple form of desktop using tabs to navigate to the various applications. Activating Advance mode gives an alternative, i.e the KDE desktop (3.4.2 as quoted). The only additional information I can come with is: Software Version EePC 1.6.1.64, Build 2008-07-24-16-55. The BIOS version listed is 0501. I understand this is not a very up-to-date version of LInux and it may be that only another EeePC user will understand what it's all about and how to solve the problem. Thanks for you time.

Ok, Xandros is the name of the distro.

Since you are in KDE 3.x, you need kcontrol, or its equivalent.

You should have a Regional Settings item, which allows you to control the format for various items, including the date. And sorry for being too short on my answers, but it was 7am here and I had to go to work. I don't know how much you know or don't, but if we are both patient we can fix this date format annoyance.

I have an eeepc701, but unfortunately got shut of Xandros fairly quickly as it was too restrictive. In fact I seem to recollect that it was the date format that broke the camel's back. I've switched to Kubuntu, via a few others.

However, see if this link helps now http://wiki.eeeuser.com/regional_settings_control_panel . There's lots of other good stuff in the wiki, too.

aga

Thanks aga. I followed up the link and did all the necessary. I can see why you got frustrated with this. Using the terminal I came unstuck at the first hurdle with the message 'kwrite cannot connect to X server'. Using Synaptic, I added the Repository, clicked on xandros in the list and found regional-settings but couldn't mark it for installation. It came up with an error message about unresolvable dependencies. I'll persevere - if I can get this to work then Xandros will be perfectly adequate for my portable needs rather than experimenting with new distros.
And to Hei Ku: There is no need to apologise for anything - I am sure we are all grateful for whatever time knowledgeable and therefore busy folk like yourself can spare. And I hope I did not appear to be impatient. I just had to give a wry smile when you mentioned things like distros as I hadn't a clue what they were. As for knowledge, I am fairly at home with Windows environments and now my beloved iMac (probably more than most pensioners) and, to me, they are deemed to work on a given platform or OS. I can see now that Linux is the platform whereas distros are the various versions available. I am just not yet accustomed to delving into the depths of the system using commands etc. Takes me back to my MS DOS days. Thanks again - here's hoping we'll get there. At least aga has confirmed that 'regional settings' is not immediately available in Xandros which is relief - I though I was just being stupid.

Try typing this in a terminal:

kcmshell language

If it is there, it should open the language settings dialog. There you have to adjust it to your preference.

Have tried - got error message 'could not find module 'language''. The thought was there. I did try the routine suggested in the link supplied by aga again using the terminal in Easy Mode and it went through all the motions but came up with the same report about unmet dependencies as with using Synaptic. Ends up with: Depends: kdebase but it is not going to be installed
Depends: i18ndata

I can't believe that distro is so trimmed down.

Don't you have a screen somewhere around the Control Panel called Regional Settings?

I agree, it seems crazy but I'm afraid it definitely appears to have been removed or just not added in the first place. The link that aga sent seems to confirm this. The Eeepc by Asus was only designed to be a basic machine (originally with children in mind, I believe) for surfing the net, e-mailing, writing documents and spreadsheets using OpenOffice plus a few other applications thrown in and it does that job really well. It just doesn't pay to ask too much more of it as it stands. Please don't lose sleep over this - I realize you can't conjure solutions out of the blue for such a system. I may reluctantly give in and install another distro but, from what I have read on the EeePC forums, each seems to have its own problems and some folks end up reverting to Xandros. Obviously, if any other ideas are forthcoming they will be welcome. Meanwhile I'll continue experimenting and maybe trawl the EeePC forums again. Thanks again for your input.

The settings for the dateformat are contained in the ~/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals file (~ being the user's home directory).

It's an ASCII file and you can search for the [Locale] section which contains the settings.

Here's mine:

Code: Select all

[Locale]
Charset=iso8859-1
Country=de
Language=en_US
MonetaryThousandsSeparator=$0.$0
ThousandsSeparator=$0.$0


Your's may be different. The parameter to play with is called DateFormatShort, and I have set it to %Y-%m-%d just to try a different setting.

Code: Select all

[Locale]
Charset=iso8859-1
Country=de
DateFormatShort=%Y-%m-%d
Language=en_US
MonetaryThousandsSeparator=$0.$0
ThousandsSeparator=$0.$0


Deleting the line with the date settings sets it to the default (whatever that is might depend on the selected country).

p.s. you might have to do the modification while KDE is not running to keep the setting for permanent use.

Thanks Ipwizard for that. As it happens I managed to solve the problem literally in the last 10 minutes and only found your post when I came to submit this so I didn't get to put yours to to the test. Your input is appreciated anyway and may help someone else.
I found the following link in the Wiki EeePC: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=28055 . It was a question of getting the correct repository. Thanks every one for your time and patience.

Friends I tryed to run systemsettings on ubuntu 9.04 with gnorm environement but a blank window appears. I was told i need to install Kdeadmin or to delete the folder .kde. I am a bit confuse. Someone can help me?
Thanks