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dw_suggestions2012-12-02 01:13 am
I want the date format "Sat 2012-12-01" (or custom date formats)
Title:
I want the date format "Sat 2012-12-01" (or custom date formats)
Area:
Internationalisation/time and date
Summary:
I always use ISO format dates, so definitely want my journal displayed using those. However, in the context of a blog it's also useful to know on what day of the week a posting or comment was made, so it would be nice to have day-of-week followed by ISO date.
Description:
As per the title, and for the reasons in the summary, I would specifically like the date format "Sat 2012-12-01".
However, I have no idea how many other people would like that specific format. Maybe it would be good instead to provide a mechanism for users to specify custom date and time formats?
There are already existing standards for this, such as the trusty old POSIX strftime ( http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/strftime.html ), ICU format strings ( http://userguide.icu-project.org/formatparse/datetime#TOC-Date-Time-Format-Syntax ) or the Microsoft one familiar to users of Windows and/or Excel ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx ).
It would be good to use one of those rather than reinventing the wheel. My vote would be for ICU, provided that library is available to the DW platform.
This suggestion:
Should be implemented as-is.
15 (34.1%)
Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (11.4%)
Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (4.5%)
(I have no opinion)
21 (47.7%)
(Other: please comment)
1 (2.3%)
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1. To add a new date format "Day YYYY-MM-DD".
2. To add a mechanism for users to create their own date formats.
I imagine that the first would be very straightforward. The second might require more work. I'm in favour of the first, and have no particular opinion on the second.
EDIT: Just noticed that there is already a format that looks like "YYYY-MM-DD, Day".
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At least in the list I see, there's the option for "2012-Dec-16, Sun", but not for "2012-12-16, Sun". You can't have the day of the week unless you're prepared to put up with textual months. (I'm not, so I'm currently using "2012-12-16".)
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I'm kind of inclined against, really. I think custom date format is more relevant to layout designers than individual users. The wizard at the moment already gives 12 different options. OK, none of them matches exactly what you want, and maybe we could tweak them to be more in line with standards. But exposing fully customizable date and time format seems overkill. There's some advantage in being able to expect some degree of consistency across the site in dates being recognizable as dates.
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Also, it seems to me that would be quite hard to implement UI-wise because not only you'd have to make it possible to choose any possible format for month, day, etc., but then make it possible to order these as you wish.
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For example, if ICU were adopted, what I envisage is something like adding "Custom..." to the end of the list of date formats. If it's selected, wink a text entry box into existence, possibly accompanied by a helpful link to documentation. Then I could enter "EEE yyyy-MM-dd" and get what I want.
(The strftime equivalent would be "%a %Y-%m-%d" and the Microsoft would be "ddd yyyy-MM-dd". All annoyingly different, but none utterly terrifying. Speaking of annoying differences, I now notice the Microsoft date format specifier I linked to is not the one used by Excel. In Excel, it would be "NN YYYY-MM-DD", which is different again!)
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If date formats can be customised that way, maybe I should climb the learning curve a little more.
On the other hand, if I'm going that route, I'd like to go it cleanly, in a way that doesn't mess up the underlying style and/or customisation mechanism.
If people aren't keen either on adding the date format I want or providing high-level customisation, perhaps some kind soul could write a quick how-to for doing it manually?
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set entry_date_format = "iso";
set lang_fmt_date_iso = "%%da%% %%yyyy%%-%%mm%%-%%dd%%";
The easiest way would be to add it to your current wizard layer (it's the highlighted one at http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/layers) but that implies not using the customize interface ever again or re-adding this bit of code every time you do because this layer gets rewritten.
The more permanent way would be to add it to a custom theme layer. It's a bit more complicated but I can walk you through it if you want.
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I assume there'd be issues with coding it that way though? So I don't know whether that'd work either. But everyone setting their own formats for their journal layouts would definitely be a mess. I don't like the current date format (since to me it reads completely backwards), but with it being consistent I at least don't have to play the 'which number is the month' game.
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...I am rather hoping we can get that for dates now. It'd certainly make trying to read them much easier for me.
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Two things stand out for me:
1) There's an option to view all journals and such in my own style, site-wide. All dates are perfectly consistent to me, in that they're all formatted the way I look at them.
2) That covers within DW, but not without -- as in, people who aren't logged into DW for some reason or another. But, there's not a whole lot of variation in how dates are formatted (reference). The biggest issue I've ever had is dealing with non-US/-Canadian places, that use DMY instead of MDY for the order of things.
Granted, this is pre-coffee me, so perhaps I'm missing something.
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