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

[josephj at main.nc.us]

> Am Freitag, 14. April 2023, 08:27:20 CEST schrieb josephj at main.nc.us:
>> Nerd answer: Just provide a place to add a strftime format string and
>> make
>> everybody happy (at least those who know what strftime is). :)
>>
>> Joe
>
> But that would not allow heuristics to distinguish short periods of time
> from
> longer ones. And this is IMHO something that should not be configurable.
> Or at
> least, adding such decision rules in a configurable way would require a
> quite
> big and complex configuration dialog. I'm not sure if this would be "too
> much"
> for the aber KPA "User" (no developer, no coder, not even an enthusiast)
> ...
>
No, it's not as nice as what you are proposing.

I was thinking more along the lines of a config setting in a JSON file or
wherever KPA keeps such things and treating it as an unedited string
field. If the user gets it wrong, it's their problem. If that
field/setting was empty/not defined, KPA would do it its own way such as
what you're proposing.

It certainly wouldn't be the default way of doing things. Trying to parse
and verify the format or build it in steps in a GUI would be a lot of work
unless someone has already done that and you can just call it.

Joe

>>
>> > 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
>> ;-)
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> >
>> >   Johannes
>
>
>
>
>