forecastie
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martykan
Provide explanations on available formatting strings for custom date/time format
Currently it's possible to set a custom date/time format, but there's not hint as to which formatter to use for it. Some hints as to which formatting strings are used would be quite nice for the user.
I think it's something called "Simple date format", a search on the web will find it. That said, we should perhaps give a better idea of how to use it. Here's some docs, written for programmers, not end users: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html
I recall we talked about this previously. Offering freeform examples is good... up to a point. Maybe we only offer a fixed set of formats, the user can then choose one.
Problem with this is that you can't satisfy anyone with completely set proposals, or you allow to pick separately setting for different elements, eg. separators, number order for date and order between day, date and time.
For example my chosen format would be dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm which isn't covered by the presets. And other people would do different choices.
And other people would do different choices.
At some point, the code to support those choices becomes more complicated than I think is necessary. Sure, this is to a certain extent arbitrary, but it is a relatively minor setting.
As was pointed out in one of the bugs I listed above, there are likely libraries for this, are you prepared to put time into coding something?
As was pointed out in one of the bugs I listed above, there are likely libraries for this, are you prepared to put time into coding something?
Sadly my skills are more about taking care of servers than code itself, and about code especially not Java :/
I have seen a few places where they have a tiny legend which helps me experiment with the choices. It may show all potiential characters, a combination of common choices, and then what it represents. That's enough for me to figure out what I want.
If the popup included these 3 lines (or at least the first line) it would give me enough of a "decoder" to figure out what I can do
GyYMwWDdFEuaHkKhmsSzZX
EEEE, d MMM yyyy h:mm:ss a, zzzz
Wednesday, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:32 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
it shows you variations between shorthand and longhand, i.e. how four E's spelled out the day of the week, while three M's spelled out an abbreviated variation of the month - which might imply they could each handle three and four character variations.
it would give me enough of a "decoder" to figure out what I can do
True, it would. It likely looks intimidating and overwhelming to most users though, I'm not keen on putting things like that in the main interface, I'd prefer them at least behind a button or an "Advanced" tab.
OK, let's do as you suggest. I'd like a title/introduction for the popup though - nothing complicated, something to give a clue what the text does. Here's a suggestion: "The codes below can be used to construct a custom date and time format"
We'll need to add some more strings to make this work; can you give me some suggestions as to how to name the strings you posted in your message from Feb 3rd? These: yYMwWDdFEuaHkKhmsSzZX
EEEE, d MMM yyyy h:mm:ss a, zzzz
Wednesday, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:32 PM, Pacific Daylight Time
I think these cover it, I'll add them to strings.xml later today
simple_string_formatting_intro available_simple_string_codes example_simple_string example_date_format
I'll need someone else to code the popup though.
Oh, definitely. Like in the popup
I've just realised: the only way a user will see the codes is if they have (a) selected custom codes and (b) clicked the button to enter a custom code. It's probably overkill to then put the codes in another dialogue, so I'm going to put them directly in the "Enter custom code" dialogue, not behind another button.