Configurable date format?

[wintermute23]

Just as users can set their time format to 12 or 24 hours, and the WPS syntax allows a theme to respect that choice, would it be possible to allow the user to decide whether they want the date displayed as month-day-year, day-month-year or year-month-day?

[JdGordon]

where?

[wintermute23]

What do you mean?

Where would they set it? Probably right next to where the date format is currently set.

Where would it take effect? Within conditionals in the WPS, just as with the date format.

[JdGordon]

I was asking on which screens you wanted this.
in the WPS/SBS its just up to the themr to setup the code to do it. The 12/24hr setting comes from old code in the statusbar which isnt really required anymore and its very nlikely we add a setting for this just for skins.

I've had an idea for a long time for something I've wanted to do but had no support for... bassically configurable settings outside the regular menus for themes. This is how I would expect a time format to be done (if it ever happened, hich it probabl;y wont)

[wintermute23]

in the WPS/SBS its just up to the themr to setup the code to do it.

Except that there's currently no equivalent of %?cf that could be used. The only options I can currently see are that the themer create three different versions, with different date formats; or that the user edit the WPS/SBS to suit their preference. Neither of these is as elegant a solution as making it work the same way as the 12/24hour preference.

[JdGordon]

see the developer mailing list... I've come up with a sweet way to do this, just need time to code it up

[Llorean]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just make it an actual setting, rather than depending on every theme author everywhere to agree on what it should be called, and then depending on anyone who wants to configure it to edit a text file manually to change it?

[JdGordon]

please dont split the topic... that shold be a reply to the email thread, and no it shouldnt just be a setting because there are at least 3 "standard" date formats, and I could probably come up with more fairly easily. not to mention all the other use cases for this.

[Llorean]

Why does it matter how many configurable date options there are? It's 3 values (year, date, month) and you can only have 6 permutations of it. That means at most we have to offer people a whole six options if we want to cover the whole spectrum.

As for how many digits the year should be, whether the month should be text or a number, etc - these should probably be left up to the theme author since they affect how much space the date takes place on the screen, and thus item positioning.

[gevaerts]

Why does it matter how many configurable date options there are? It's 3 values (year, date, month) and you can only have 6 permutations of it. That means at most we have to offer people a whole six options if we want to cover the whole spectrum.

As for how many digits the year should be, whether the month should be text or a number, etc - these should probably be left up to the theme author since they affect how much space the date takes place on the screen, and thus item positioning.

Not everyone uses the same separator. I think / and - are commin, so you'd have twelve.

[Llorean]

The separator would be a separate setting, I imagine. If it wasn't just decided to be left up to the WPS author (since, I can imagine dates being split across lines with DD/MM on one line, and YYYY on the next, or similar). Or "01 Mar, 1983" which uses two different separators.

I think the existing tags should be usable as they are, and the setting should be related to some sort of new tag that can be used for ordering.

[wintermute23]

What I was thinking was that there are three orders in which people expect to see the elements, and in which they don't need to think about how to translate it into a date. Whether 2 digits are used for the year or 4; or whether the month is represented as a full name, an abbreviation or a number; and what the separators are would be reasonable to leave up to the WPS author, as the space it needs to fit into will vary from theme to theme.

Equally, when you choose "12 hour" or "24 hour" time format, you don't get to specify whether or not there should be leading zeros, whether or not seconds should be displayed, or if AM/PM markers should be upper- or lower-case.