Hi Robert,
On Thu, May 21 2020, Robert Horn wrote:
Eric S Fraga writes:
On Thursday, 21 May 2020 at 09:29, Gustavo Barros wrote:
So I'd like to suggest a simplification there, which is: a string in
the format "hour h minute" (that's small caps letter "H"), but in
I would be strongly in favour of having this option. This is how I
write times in email messages, for instance, so would be more
consistent
for me. And especially when I communicate with my European partners
when referring to times after 12 noon.
I would be opposed. There are already dozens of different formats
used
in different situations and locations for writing the time. This
would
be yet another different time format. It is relatively unique in that
there is no other place in the world that uses it. I don't think that
uniqueness is an argument in its favor.
There some other formats that are actually in widespread use worldwide
that I would prefer as available alternatives:
European dot notation. Many people use the dot rather than the colon,
so 13:05 is written as 13.05. I think this is mostly a keyboard, pen,
and
pencil thing. Colon is harder to write. It's inconveniently located
on
many keyboards. The problem with dot notation is potential confusion
for more detailed time. "15:53:00.322348" is easy to guess and
understand. "15.53.00.322348" is more confusing.
Military time, which is used in most militaries, aviation, etc.
hhmmZ - Time in UTC on a 24-hr clock, also called "Zulu time". The
ISO 8601 time "11:21:00 -0400" would be 1521Z. This is almost
mandatory when dealing with multi-location scheduling so that
everyone
uses the same time base.
hhmmJ or hhmmh - Time in local zone on a 24-hr clock. It's widely
used in military organizations for times that do not need
multi-location scheduling. The time "1121J" or "1121h" is usually
spoken in English as "eleven twenty one hours". These times are
also
lack the colon typing problem.
I've not pushed for these mostly because convenience typing military
time isn't worth figuring out all the changes that would be needed.
It's worth looking at all the issues discussed in ISO 8601 and
understanding them before you leap into time formatting changes. ISO
8601 is a compromise solution with lots of warts, but it is widely
supported and understood.
I do appreciate your arguments. But in reading them, I'd like to
emphasize that I'm not in any way suggesting the timestamps be changed
at all. The suggestion regards exclusively adding and extra way to
input such times in the date/time prompt. And one which I feel is very
much in the spirit of the prompt, which already takes ".", "+4d" (even
just "+4"), "+2w", "+2tue" as valid date specifications. If I get this
spirit correctly, it is to be smart in allowing short and easy input for
the common cases, and the less common ones are handled by the
full/formal date/time specification, which can always be inserted
anyway. This kind of input simplification is already taken far for
dates in the date/time prompt, but less so for time. And that's the
only point my suggestion tries to address. I have no particular
attachment for the "h" input form I suggested, except that it seemed
natural (Eric's response seems to endorse it). If other ways to
simplify input of time come up, they'd be equally appreciated, as far as
I'm concerned. And if none come up, the current date/time prompt would
still be my favorite tool for the task, of course. ;-)
Best,
Gustavo.
