id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
35306	Improve documentation for the various date format settings	Richard	Lufafa Joshua	"The doc:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/5.0/ref/settings/#language-code

specifically states:

""USE_I18N must be active for this setting to have any effect.""

This is not true. If `USE_I18N` is `False` and a language can not be determined (e.g. the locale middleware is not active), the `date` template filter will use the value of `LANGUAGE_CODE`.

I think the handling of date formatting is now very confusing, and the doc for `DATE_FORMAT`, `DATETIME_FORMAT`, etc is at best incomplete because it's very difficult to understand when (if ever) these settings are actually used now that the `USE_L10N` setting has been fully deprecated. 

I'm not raising this as a doc issue because I think this system is now somewhat broken. Personally I think that `USE_L10N` should be brought back; there needs to be a way to turn off localisation of dates (and numbers) separately to translations - they're not the same thing. 

I know I can force a particular locale to be used via `LANGUAGE_CODE`, but I specifically want my format to be used, and the existing `DATE_FORMAT`, etc settings seems like the right way to do that. I just need a way to force their use, which used to be simply setting `USE_L10N = True`."	Cleanup/optimization	closed	Internationalization	5.0	Normal	fixed	LANGUAGE_CODE, DATE_FORMAT	Richard Claude Paroz	Ready for checkin	1	0	0	0	0	0