Concerning the KDE 4 Digital Clock widget

[John Layt]

On Thursday 25 Feb 2010 15:03:04 Riccardo Iaconelli wrote:
> 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.

Let the bike-shedding commence :-)

The 'replace tickboxes with combo box' option I've been trying has the 
following options (where the example date/time shown is as at that moment):

Show Time:
  System default format - 16:11
  24 hour clock, no seconds - 16:11
  24 hour clock, with seconds - 16:11:23
  12 hour clock, no seconds - 16:11 pm
  12 hour clock, with seconds - 16:11:23 pm

I think this might be simpler with 3 radio buttons for choosing System Format, 
24 Hour, or 12 Hour (or just those options in the combo), with a tickbox for 
Show Seconds as currently done.  If Date Format uses a combo, then using radio 
buttons might look inconsistent.

Show Date:
  Do not show date
  System default short date - 25/02/2010
  ISO standard short date - 2010-02-25
  Short weekday - Thu
  Long weekday - Thursday
  Day and Month - 25/02
  Day, Month and Year - 25/02/2010
  Weekday, Day and Month - Thu 25/02
  Weekday, Day, Month and Year - Thu 25/02/2010
  Day and Month Name - 25 Feb
  Day, Month Name and Year - 25 Feb 2010
  Weekday, Day and Month Name - Thu 25 Feb
  Weekday, Day, Month Name and Year - Thu 25 Feb 2010
  ... and many many more...

Each of those date formats is translated so are sort-of localised for regional 
customs with regards to ordering (mm/dd or dd/mm?) and separators (spaces, 
commas, dashes, slashes, dots or combinations there-of?).  However language 
based localisation is not the same as region based localisation, e.g. a 
Spanish speaker in the USA would get the wrong format.

It then just becomes a question of which combinations to include in the list, 
trying to cater for them all would get overwhelming.  One solution to both 
this and the localisation issue might be to add a list of preferred date 
formats to the locale file for each country and just show those with a few 
standard options.

It's been suggested in bko that in addition to setting the Long Date and Short 
Date formats in System Settings we have a new option for Short Display Date 
that the clock could use, but that's just moving the problem elsewhere.

Using a bunch of tickboxes and/or radio buttons for Show Weekday, Show Year, 
Use Month Name, Use Short Numbers, Use Short Names, Show Month First, etc, 
would I think look messy and overwhelming and localising all the possible 
combinations would make for a long translation list.  Using both a combo and a 
few tickboxes might work but I haven't tried it yet as it seems an awkward 
process to me.

Allowing the user to edit their own format strings avoids all these issues but 
is bad usability, which is where a simple drag-and-drop config wizard would be 
a good thing.

Cheers!

John.