Request: better override functionality in locale settings

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Wednesday 27 August 2014 11:34:52 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> > In my opinion, this is a very serious usability regression and would
> > stop me from using Plasma 5. Are there any plans to change the
> > behavior/appearance of this settings applet?
> 
> I don't know what it is, but anytime someome doesn't like something, it's
> "usability" all of a sudden. Usability has a strict meaning, and translating
> it to "I don't use it, but I don't like it, so it's bad usability" isn't
> very useful.
> 
> I understand that it changes you way you set up your system, of course.

Actually, while the fact that choosing formats and units by locale instead of 
directly isn't necessarily a usability problem, presenting all locales in a 
single drop-down _is_ .
See also the HIG for drop-down lists [1] which says "For a single selection 
out of a large number of items (n>20), use a list view". This is because, as 
Matthew stated, scrolling through a huge list inside a drop-down is very very 
cumbersome.
I've just filed a bug about this issue [1]. 

The above being said, I do understand that people who e.g. prefer the metric 
system though they live in a region that uses the imperial system by default 
might find it unnecessarily intricate to find out which region uses their 
preferred system first.
The benefits of using the POSIX-compliant locale system instead of custom 
formats selection still outweigh the costs from my point of view, but maybe we 
can find a way for people to make it easier for them to switch to common 
formats?
Could we maybe put a hint somewhere that e.g. en_DK might give people what 
they need at least for the date and time formats?

[1] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=338599