Locales and PrestaShop

[clokwise]

I'd like to discuss several issues with PrestaShop related to customer names and addresses.

From my perspective, as a non-European, PrestaShop is very Euro centric, perhaps even Franco-centric (is that a term?). Similar problems with software originating from the USA are quite infamous, so PrestaShop's case is not unique by any means. But PrestaShop needs urgent correction to really make it a truly global software application. I don't believe that such fixes are beyond the scope of v1.2, but I'm not participating in the development of the project, I'm only speculating based on my own estimated understanding of the coding required.

NAMES AND FORMATTING

Having personally done mail-order and online retailing for over 25 years, I can attest that PrestaShop is seriously broken when it comes to handling addresses outside of France, or at best, Western Europe.
Take for example a typical USA address:

John Smith
1234 W. Green Street
Seattle, WA 98125
USA

PrestaShop displays it like this:

John SMITH
1234 W. Green Street
98125 Seattle
USA - Washington

Yuk. This is really totally unacceptable for the USA. Specifically:

* Surnames should not be ALL CAPS
* City should be first, followed by a comma
* State should be a 2 letter abbreviation (not the state name spelled out!)
* Postcode (zip code) should follow the State with a couple spaces in between
* Country should be last on a line by itself
* Further, if the country of the seller and recipient are the same, the Country often times should not display at all

I could give many more examples of other countries, but the point is PrestaShop needs a flexible system for displaying names and addresses. Perhaps a name and address template module would be an idea - create a template and assign it to selected countries. This template function should apply to all aspects of PrestaShop including FO, BO, and all exported data such as emails, PDFs, and mailing labels.

There is the issue of auto-CAPPING surnames which is totally contrary to most non-Europeans. Then there are also issues where some locales do not have post codes (Dublin, Macau), yet PrestaShop forces customers to enter one. Additionally, some Cities have numbers in their name (Dublin 4), yet PrestaShop disallows such input. Again, the address template function could correct such issues by providing input logic as well as layout logic.

Here's some int'l name and address formats references:

http://www.addressdoctor.com/en/countries_data/addressformats.asp
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html
http://www.bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html#Formats

SHIPPED LOCALES

PrestaShop v1.1 shipped with a really bizarre selection of locales. It almost seems as if a developer were asked to name as many countries as he could off the top of his head in two minutes and then that was all that was accepted.

Notable omissions (I'm know, I'm missing many others):
* The USA is missing Washington, DC
* Canada and Australia have no states/provinces/territories
* North America Zone is referred to as "US"
* There is no South America Zone
* Many major countries are missing (Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Mexico...) while some relatively minor countries are included (Togo, Singapore, Ivory Coast!?!?)
* Most surprisingly, even several EU countries are omitted!!

Obviously the solution here is simple - data entry. But the fact that PrestaShop 1.1 shipped with such poor locale data is simply embarrassing and it should never have been allowed to happen.

MAILING LABELS

PrestaShop has no mailing label support - that should almost be a crime. What's the point of having such a sophisticated customer / product / inventory / payment / shipping / billing system if you ultimately have to hand write all your addresses for your parcels? In my case I have to cut and paste all my customer addresses from the Orders tab into a MS Word die-cut label template, one by one. This is massively time consuming.

A dead simple solution would be a text export, or alternately a CSV export, of mailing addresses based on a filtered list of customer Orders. Such a list could be merged into MS Word or other software fairly easily.

A more sophisticated solution might be in the form of a module which prints customized labels of various sizes, with possibly barcode support as well. Take it to another level and have PrestaShop print out standard waybill and customs declarations forms for each customer.


I absolutely love PrestaShop and sing it's praises highly. The issues outlined above are those which really bug ME personally. Maybe they don't bother you, if that's the case, please don't take offense at my critique. I'm not a developer, so I feel powerless to offer any actual coding. I'm just trying to be constructive in my criticism of the project in hopes somebody else can step up and work on addressing at least some of these issues.

[TropischBruin]

Well, your right about the surname in CAPS, this is also not used in The Netherlands.
This can be changed in the source-code.
There has been a bug report on this according to this topic but I cannot find that bug rapport anywhere.
The addresses in PS are setup the European way so for your personal use it should also be changed in the source-code.
osCommerce has this issue better addressed.

I'm not sure why you make an issue about missing country's, just add them.

Why not create a module for exporting your customers. Like the export module build for exporting maillists.
In my osCommerce shop I print out the invoice and use this as the shipping document and thus as a label.

My personal issue with PS is that is has no Ordereditor, how wierd is that!
Als the behavement of shipping and payment modules is in some cases no-usable (you cannot force an carrier option to use just one payment module). Take a look at my post on this)
Furthermore the way that the trackingnumber behaves is silly (look for my post on this).

I totally agree with you that PS looks promising, I only wish that de dev-Team would be more arround and listen to the comments of day-to-day users because looking at the rare comments made by some members of the Team I think they live in cloud nine

[clokwise]

I'm not sure why you make an issue about missing country's, just add them.

Yes, I suppose I could, there's only 200 missing countries and maybe a thousand or so states....

And I suppose the next guy could do the exact same thing too. And heck, we ALL should just add them all ourselves. See my point? This should be done ONCE, before PrestaShop is even shipped, so that every single user of PrestaShop doesn't have to do that.

Why not create a module for exporting your customers. Like the export module build for exporting maillists.

I would if I could. As I stated, I'm not a developer, I'm a day-to-day user just like yourself. I have hacked bits and pieces of PrestaShop to custom fit my needs, but I don't actually know php. Attempting to build a module from scratch is simply not an option for me.

I agree with you, an Order Editor would be VERY nice. As would be an option to change payment method after it has already been selected. Half the orders in my site are orphans resulting from customers changing their payment method.

[spott]

About missing countries and states.
I am really happy, that PrestaShop doesnt't have all countries. It was pain in the ass in ZenCart to remove these hunderds of countries.

What PrestaShop needs - some simple SQL import/export tool.
So that you can export from one shop some datas and use them in other shop. Or download from PrestaShop website - let say countries list package - and then you can add that easy.

I have multiple shops with similar (not the same products) - and I want to add to one shop all attributes, then export these and take to use in other shop also. Right now I think only way is for that from phpMyAdmin.

I'm not sure why you make an issue about missing country's, just add them.

Yes, I suppose I could, there's only 200 missing countries and maybe a thousand or so states....

And I suppose the next guy could do the exact same thing too. And heck, we ALL should just add them all ourselves. See my point? This should be done ONCE, before PrestaShop is even shipped, so that every single user of PrestaShop doesn't have to do that.

Why not create a module for exporting your customers. Like the export module build for exporting maillists.

I would if I could. As I stated, I'm not a developer, I'm a day-to-day user just like yourself. I have hacked bits and pieces of PrestaShop to custom fit my needs, but I don't actually know php. Attempting to build a module from scratch is simply not an option for me.

I agree with you, an Order Editor would be VERY nice. As would be an option to change payment method after it has already been selected. Half the orders in my site are orphans resulting from customers changing their payment method.

[Damien Metzger]

Hi clockwise,

Thank you for this structured message, it's so much more pleasant than only whining.
And... you're right. Prestashop is provided by french developers and we know a great deal more about France and maybe Europe than about US or smaller countries.

Prestashop has not always been multilingual. We successively added translations, converted everything to utf-8, added the states, improving the taxes management and so on. But there is still some more things to do.

Names and formatting
Once I would have said that you can change your templates to fit your needs. Maybe it was true at the time, but now I know it quite impossible, you would have to change also PDF, mails and both PHP and TPL files.
So that's true, adresses format should be customizable. But I can't promise it will be done soon, that's not my responsibility.

Shipped locales
I can't agree with you there. Spott said it, too much countries is awful. As for the choice, we first took the 30 most developed countries for e-commerce. So yes Singapore is more important than Argentina (I mean no offense).
I'm sorry if we forgot Washington, DC but for the other countries, we'll put the states if someone does not only complain but give us the states list also (French and English please ). We can't manage 200 countries alone.
You're confused with the zones. Zones are only a back office tool for setting up the carrier prices. Maybe we should name them "Shipping area" or something else. But it does not mean continent.

Mailing labels
You're right, but that's the kind of feature that can be developed by everyone, as a tab for the back office or as a module. And if now that you said it I'm well aware it's important, a few minutes ago I had never thought of it.


@TropischBruin: We're just very busy and we miss a community manager.


As for a really powerful import/export tool, phpMyAdmin is quite good
(i DO know that you are not developers, but if you must learn something, SQL would be more useful than a complicated CSV format )

[TropischBruin]

Hi

Hello Damien, thank you for your reply!

Names and formatting
Once I would have said that you can change your templates to fit your needs. Maybe it was true at the time, but now I know it quite impossible, you would have to change also PDF, mails and both PHP and TPL files.
So that's true, adresses format should be customizable. But I can't promise it will be done soon, that's not my responsibility.

Could you please explain to us how to get rid of the surname in CAPS?

@TropischBruin: We're just very busy and we miss a community manager.

Well, I'm willing to help :smirk:

:cheese:

[Dave Egerton]

Hi Damien,

I think there are people willing to help Prestashop, it has a lot of potential. Some people are developers, others including myself are CSS/XHTML/Designer types.

I am not sure, I know you have a "features request" but is there any mileage is getting everyone to agree what is internal (core) development and what would be modules. Then the most important modules could be completed by other developers - even if there is a charge involved for buying the module as its non-core and not required on every install

Documentation - could there be a document team, that writes this into the Wiki - This is a big problem right now, but if someone was responsible for admin guide, someone else for designers guide and Prestashop for developers/back-end tech guide would that speed this up. For example if I wrote up a page on admin guide - "understanding features" and then is sent to prestashop for review, changed where needed and uploaded - then everyone has access and your time is freed to concentrate on core development. Documentation would help everyone and reduce forum posts.

These are just my thoughts - you may of course have this all covered but I think we all recognise with "community driven software" it the sum of the whole community that helps make products successful

[clokwise]

Once I would have said that you can change your templates to fit your needs. Maybe it was true at the time, but now I know it quite impossible, you would have to change also PDF, mails and both PHP and TPL files.
So that's true, adresses format should be customizable. But I can't promise it will be done soon, that's not my responsibility.

It's good to know you acknowledge that this needs to be done. I hope it can be prioritized as it will make a big difference as far as how PrestaShop is accepted for use in the rest of the world.

Shipped locales
I can't agree with you there. Spott said it, too much countries is awful. As for the choice, we first took the 30 most developed countries for e-commerce. So yes Singapore is more important than Argentina (I mean no offense).

So how about Togo and Ivory Coast?? Are they really in the top 30? I had no idea...

Anyhow, I strongly disagree with your position about too many countries being awful. How so?? Please explain.

Look, if I'm running a local shop using PrestaShop, and I don't want those 200+ extra countries, it's pretty easy to one-time click the checkbox next to the country and disable/delete it from the system. Versus, if I am running a global web shop and might get orders from anywhere, do I really have to find a list of all countries and states and input them all myself?? Every week I get messages from customers saying they can't make a purchase from me because their country is not in my system (Taiwan, Latvia, Romania, Mexico....). How can I possibly anticipate that I will be getting customers from these places? This gives the first impression to the customer of poor customer service. So I have to write back to them and apologize and then update the countries list so that they can make a purchase. I wonder how many people just run away and don't even write to me, thinking that I don't ship to their country??

Seriously... why can't someone just make this list and ship it with PrestaShop? Why not borrow a country list from another OS project? And if you think people are really gonna grumble about the long country list, you could even make it an install option: Please select the countries you want to support in your shop (Default: All).

Mailing labels
You're right, but that's the kind of feature that can be developed by everyone, as a tab for the back office or as a module. And if now that you said it I'm well aware it's important, a few minutes ago I had never thought of it.

For starters, a simple export as I described earlier would be just fine for me for v1.2.

Thanks Damien for your attention, and I want to let you know you can count on me, albeit as a non-developer, to contribute as much effort as I can to the project !!

[deborahjb]

FYI, for now if you want to edit PDF invoices to reflect US formatting, see my post:

http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/8981/

[pneeds]

So what happens if you want to ship WORLDWIDE and the countries are not listed.

I think it's utterly ridiculous to think that it is not important.