The viewer's "x years ago" info sucks ;-)

[Tobias Leupold]

Am Donnerstag, 13. April 2023, 00:43:24 CEST schrieb Johannes Zarl-Zierl:
> Am Mittwoch, 12. April 2023, 13:27:11 CEST schrieb Tobias Leupold:
> > Am Mittwoch, 12. April 2023, 06:22:07 CEST schrieb Per Funke:
> > > "1.83 y/m/d ago" is unconventional but attractive
> > > IMHO,
> > > Per Funke
> > 
> > Hmmm ... I think this would be too unconventional, especially facing the
> > fact that a year is not divided into decimal units (it's 12 months after
> > all, not 10).
> 
> Maybe it's just me, but using decimal representation for time units does not
> seem so odd. "1.83 years ago" is easy to read and understand, even if one
> does not intuitively realize that it is the same as "1 year, 9 months, 28
> days, 19 hours 20 minutes ago".
> Plus: it eliminates the need to come up with a universal way to shorten this
> (should it be 1 year, 10 months, or 1 year, 9months, almost 29 days?).
> 
> Would a hybrid approach work better in your opinion? I.e. "1 year, 9.96
> months". This does arguably combine the best and worst of both approaches:
> 
> - ugly to compute (depends on the length of the month)
> - decimal point in non-decimal unit (e.g. "4.6 months")
> + canonical representation (always "X years, Y months", no complicated
> heuristic needed)
> + more intuitive than pure decimal notation ("1 year 9.96 months ago" vs
> "1.83 years ago")
> 
> > Any objections if I implement this in a way I would expect it to be (both
> > for birthdays/ages and timespans) soonish and you all have a look at it
> > then?
> 
> Sure - I'll gladly take a look at that work branch and comment on it ;-)

I'd go this way :-P ;-)

> Cheers,
>   Johannes