I want the date format "Sat 2012-12-01" (or custom date formats)

[gerald_duck]

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.

Poll #12340 I want the date format "Sat 2012-12-01" (or custom date formats)

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

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%)

Comments

[gerald_duck]

It's possible to describe date and time formats using brief textual strings — in the suggestion, I linked to three existing standards for doing so.

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!)

[ninetydegrees]

Our system is close to strftime. Hmm. Adding a custom option is doable. I thought you meant something much more user-friendly. To me, what you suggest is advanced customization which we can do already as liv said but why not?

[azurelunatic]

I am seeing in my head a picker and dragger with the optionsshown prettily on a sidebar and the dragginess like the beta update page, degrading to the codes on a sidebar and a text field, with preview button.

[ninetydegrees]

That's what I thought about too at first. That's much more sophisticated than anything we have in Customize. Would be neat, thought. I'd love that for module placement.

[turlough]

That would be awesome to have!

[msilverstar]

+1