Universale Time Format Setting

Registered by Danielle Foré

We have quite a few apps that show the date and it's come to my attention that users want to have different date formats. This can be dependent on your locale where the month should come before the day in some cases and after the day in others, or this can be dependent on how technical you are where some users want to see "Today" and some users want to see "2011-10-29".

Currently, each app either handles this independently with no configuration or handles it's own configuration and what we end up with is a system where it's really hard for a user to simply set how he wants to see the date across the whole OS.

What we need to do is create a universal dconf key that we can all use and that can be set in Switchboard so that we can get really nice date formats for free in our apps and that users can see the format they want consistently in all of our apps.

Of course we do have to have a way to keep certain provisions in showing the date. For example in Marlin it might make sense to show the full modify date down to the second, but in Dexter you only want to see the day, month, and year of a person's birth.

Initially API and GSettings schema can live in granite. Ultimately it should be upstreamed to GLib.
A possible location for this key(s) would be /system/locale

Example Formats:

Today at 5:36 PM
Today at 17:36
December 17th, 2011 at 5:36 PM
17 December, 2011 at 17:36
17-12-2011 at 17:36:03

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
None
Direction:
Approved
Assignee:
None
Definition:
Discussion
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

Initially API and GSettings schema can live in granite. Ultimately it should be upstreamed to GLib.
A possible location for this key(s) would be /system/locale which exists for me but is empthy

Postler, Marlin
    Today 20:15, Yesterday 15:36, February 2 00:11 AM, March 16 2008 5:36 PM
Midori
    Today, Yesterday, Februrary 2, March 16 2008

"4 minutes ago" style isn't used in any app to date and may be complicated to support.

Seems to overlap with existing locale-specific date/time settings. Needs more investigation. --shnatsel

(?)

Work Items

This blueprint contains Public information 
Everyone can see this information.

Subscribers

No subscribers.