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Alternative Short Dates
By zsau , Section Wishlist [] Posted on Tue Apr 16, 2002 at 12:00:00 PM PST

Multiple different ways of formatting short dates—such as d.mm.yy (16.04.02)—should be added to Scoop to make it more accessible to people from outside of the United States of America.

The USA formats their short dates mm/dd/yy. As far as I know, no other country does this. For people who expect dates to be formatted in a different way, it can be dangerous. At the very least, it is annoying.

The International Organization for Standarization have standardised yyyy-mm-dd for short date formatting (hyphens optional). Japan uses a format similar (if not identical to this) for their short dates. In Australia, we use d.mm.yy and d/mm/yy.

Scoop appears to expect people to have come from parts of the world other than America, for example, it allows me to choose the AEST timezone (although it incorrectly calls it EAST). Scoop's internationalisation should be enhanced to include support for alternative ways of formatting short dates.

< yet another themes idea | Got Too Much Time On Your Hands? >

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Poll

When writing short dates:

· Smallest to Largest (d.mm.yy, dd/mm/yy etc.) 50%

· Largest to Smallest (yyyy-mm-dd etc.) 50%

· Random (mm/dd/yy, dd/yy/mm etc.) 0%

Votes: 6
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Alternative Short Dates | 12 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden)

definitely (none / 0) (#2)
by hurstdog on Tue Apr 16, 2002 at 10:09:08 AM PST

Thats one of the things that really bothers me in scoop, is the liberal use of DATE_FORMAT in mysql. I think we should change all database datetime fields to be unix epoch time, then convert them on the fly when displaying. Then we could have users choose how they want their dates to show up. More flexibility, and quicker selects from the database.

-hurstdog

ISO is preferrable by juahonen, 04/16/2002 11:49:49 AM PST (none / 0)

Epoch time isn't *that* limited. by Captain_Tenille, 04/17/2002 02:03:51 PM PST (none / 0)

True that by juahonen, 04/17/2002 11:47:41 PM PST (none / 0)

the main thing by hurstdog, 04/18/2002 08:12:42 AM PST (none / 0)

ISO Standard (5.00 / 2) (#3)
by wedman on Tue Apr 16, 2002 at 11:07:18 AM PST

I prefer the ISO standard date/time myself: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss. :)

I like either: by pwhysall, 04/21/2002 05:01:29 AM PST (none / 0)

Damn Time::Timezone (none / 0) (#6)
by panner on Wed Apr 17, 2002 at 02:27:34 PM PST

The timezones are ripped out of Time::Timezone, which is apparently wrong about the timezones. I suppose EAST, WAST, EADT, and WADT could be changed to AEST, AWST, AEDT, and AWDT. But then, according to this time zone list, there is no AWDT. In any case, that would require a db patch to update anyone using one of those.

So, while we're looking at time zones, does anyone else have any corrections/suggestions for the time zone list? Anyone feel left out, or wrongly represented?

Now, about the dates. Without a doubt, there should be options for the date listing. And like hurstdog, said, scoop needs to move away from DATE_FORMAT (a mysql extension) and to just storing a date and formatting it internally. Once that's been changed, adding the preference for format wouldn't be much of a problem.

--
Keith Smiley

Timezones, ianend middle by mrBlond, 04/19/2002 04:20:50 PM PST (none / 0)
Timezones by zsau, 04/23/2002 05:10:49 AM PST (none / 0)

time format conversion via regex (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by hillct on Mon Apr 22, 2002 at 09:58:53 AM PST

It would ve profoundly cool to have a site variable which contains a regex that defines the date/time display format so site owners could develop their own arbitrary time/date formatting.

--CTH

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Alternative Short Dates | 12 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden)

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