Concerning the KDE 4 Digital Clock widget

[Riccardo Iaconelli]

On Thursday 25 February 2010 10:27:12 Maki Jaderborg wrote:
> But the KDE 3.5 clock at least allowed the following configuration options:
> 
> Time format:
> HH:MM:SS
> pH:MM:SS AMPM
> 
> Date format:
> WEEKDAY DD MONTH YYYY
> SHORTWEEKDAY MONTH dD YYYY
> 
> Short date format:
>  YYYY-MM-DD
> dD.mM.YYYY
> DD.MM.YYYY
> 
> Why didn't those move over into the KDE 4 clock?

Well, this is reasonable, and we can probably implement a similar feature in 
the default clock. See below for details.

> Seems to me like the most
> basic of configuration options to have. Personally I would at the very
> least look at ISO 8601, which is a standard that should at least be
> considered to allow for KDE to appeal to a broader market "out of the
> box".
> 
> I must confess I'm not too knowledgeable about how to even begin work on
> such an applet, so it will take a long time before I can even attempt to
> release even a beta of it. Doesn't mean I won't look at it, but the KDE
> team surprised me by losing configuration options going from KDE 3.5 to
> KDE 4.x. It just feels like something went wrong somewhere that normal
> users don't see.

Actually, writing a Plasmoid is a really easy task nowadays. If you want a 
quick and dirty thing, you can just pick the code of the clock and modify the 
time to make it be displayed to fit your needs. However, my response was 
concentrated on the feature you asked, which was to implement the PHP date 
format in the default clock.

While this is certainly not feasible, it doesn't mean we shouldn't allow the 
user to tweak the way their clock shows them the time. This shouldn't however 
be a nerdy and unaccessible PHP string, but more similar to what you can see 
here:
http://www.layt.net/john/blog/odysseus/a_challenge

I personally wouldn't be aganist such a widget. If you would like to start on 
trying to implement such a thing, I'm pretty sure we could benefit from it in 
the whole KDE, and it's probably a nice, simple and rewarding job to do.

> Sorry, just my two cents on the subject. I honestly am thankful for your
> time in responding to my original query. KDE is, for the most part, a nice
> DE to work with. A bit bulky at times, and I have some issues with how
> some KDE 4.x stuff works, but for the most part it's just trying to get to
> terms with the new way of doing things. Overall it's still my DE of
> choice.
> 
> So nice work on the whole, just not sure why the decisions regarding the
> clock were made. @_@

I'm also CC'ing plasma-devel at kde.org, so that other developers are aware of 
your suggestion. I hope you don't actually mind. =)

-Riccardo
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