Adrian Crum wrote:
There are two date/time issues that need to be addressed in the form
widget:
1. Converting Strings to/from Timestamps using the user's time zone. I'm
thinking this is something that needs to be controlled by a widget XML
element attribute - since there may be cases where the server's time
zone should be used. It would be best to have the widget default to the
server's time zone (for backward compatibility) and have time zone
support switched on through an XML element attribute.
Right now I'd say we go ahead and default it to use the users time zone, in
other words interpret any user input as time in their own time zone - or even
change all date/time inputs to allow the user to specify the time zone (which
IMO would be a great enhancement) and have it default to the user's preferred
time zone. There are various system time stamps that should be in the system's
time zone, but for the most part when a user enters data we can assume (and
default to) that they mean it in terms of their own time zone.
Note that from an infrastructure level this can be a little complicated, but
it's not too bad, and I agree it's worth doing. This would make OFBiz a much
more global-friendly
2. Date/time input format. I agree that the descending format should be
retained for consistency sake. However, our users prefer to input dates
in the mm/dd/yyyy format. So, I'll leave that issue alone and let
someone else tackle the configurable data entry format that Daniel
Martinez proposed.
Yes, to do this properly would require a great deal of effort. Partly because
of that and partly because of issues with it I mentioned earlier in terms of
usability I'm against doing this, but interested in seeing counter-arguments
still...
-David
