Bug 142297

Summary:	kclockapplet date/time format inconsistencies
Product:	[Plasma] kicker	Reporter:	Ihar "Philips" Filipau <thephilips>
Component:	kclockapplet	Assignee:	Christian Gebauer <gebauer>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	finex
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Gentoo Packages
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:

Description Ihar "Philips" Filipau 2007-02-27 22:32:53 UTC

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.5)
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages
OS:                Linux

kclockapplet, despite having "Date & Time Format..." item in its menu, blantly disregards specified formats:

1. Time format on my system is set to "HH:MM:SS" but clock applet does display anyway "HH:MM"

2. My date is set to display SHORTWEEKDAY, but kclockapplet, if said to show day of week, displays always full WEEKDAY.

Proposed solutions/options:

1. Add relevant date and time formats as they are used by clock applet to locale configuration dialog. (The one invoked from kclockapplet menu by selecting "Date & Time Format...")

2. Allow kclockapplet to take customized by user date/time format and display date time according to user wishes, not to some hardcoded formats.

3. kclockapplet should abide system settings and use formats as they are specified in "Data & Time Format..." dialog.

3rd option is most unusable since it would conflict with documents created on the system. 2nd is easy for programmers and 1st is most straightforward and what MacOSX does. For me any of 1st or 2nd or 3rd would do.

P.S. To allow display SHORTWEEKDAY before time - do I need to file separate bug for that? I haven't found bug like that...

Comment 1 Ihar "Philips" Filipau 2007-02-27 23:08:05 UTC

Additional thoughts on 1st option.

At moment there are three kinds of standard formats: time, date and short date.

For that to be useful to clocks (and any other application willing to display date/time to user) are needed additional formats: short time, date and time, short date and time.

Then in clock applet allow user to choose any format he likes: date, time, date & time, short or full variant.

But I guess that goes way too far for kclockapplet bug.

In fact same applicable to Konqueror too: in detailed view it also displays some hardcoded date&time format - not the combination of ones specified in "Date & Time Format..." dialog. Because the dialog in fact does not have any fitting format for the situation.

I think proper solutions would be to come up with a list of date/time formats (ones as required by applications), allow user configuration by mean of "Data & Time Format..." dialog, then use them in applications. In the applications which need more flexibility - like clock applet - allow to choose between different formats from the list.

Comment 2 Jim Knoble 2007-06-01 03:02:05 UTC

At the very least, the weekday display in the clock applet should use SHORTWEEKDAY and not WEEKDAY.  A clock is not supposed to take the whole space of the panel, which English "Wednesday" nearly causes it to do.

Mac OS X is a good model to emulate for this, however, and i wouldn't mind being able to configure the order of day/date/time components in the clock.  This would also allow the clock to be useful in a vertical panel at the left or right edge of the screen (which it isn't useful for when the weekday is displayed, currently).

Comment 3 Mark Summerfield 2008-05-28 14:08:57 UTC

I quite agree that the full WEEKDAY is much too long and very annoying.
But this is just part of a bigger problem---while the clock quite rightly picks up its default from the user's global settings, it should allow the user to completely configure what is shown e.g., using strftime() format strings---this could always be put on an "Advanced" configuration tab with a Default button to restore it if the user made a mistake. (The Xfce4 clock uses strftime() and allows me to get exactly the clock I want.)

Comment 4 FiNeX 2009-09-08 00:02:02 UTC

Kicker is no more mantained and all bugs/wishes will not be fixed/implemented in KDE3. A list of the most interesting/unresolved issues which is still valid for KDE4 has been created. Before reopening old kicker bugs on KDE4 Plasma, please try the new KDE 4.3.1, check the current behaviour and, only if you find new bugs or if you need a particular feature, open a new bug report.

Remember that KDE 4 is a full rewrite of KDE 3 so some old features will not be re-implemented because the behaviour has be changed a lot on some sides.

Thanks for the comprehension and enjoy the new KDE 4!

-- 
FiNeX & D. Andres