Bug 185340

Summary:	Need better methods of selecting time zone (timezone) in clock widgets
Product:	[Unmaintained] kdelibs	Reporter:	Tristan Miller <psychonaut>
Component:	kdeui	Assignee:	kdelibs bugs <kdelibs-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	aseigo, jamundso, jkt, jlayt, KaiUweBroulik2, orion
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	openSUSE
OS:	Unspecified
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	The standard Gnome panel clock, showing a nice example of how this can be done. Includes a neat world map projection. :)

Description Tristan Miller 2009-02-23 14:36:07 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.2.0)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

Both the digital and analogue clock widgets' settings have a "time zones" setting which allows the user to select which time zones are displayed.  This is done via a table which includes columns for "Area", "Region", and "Comment".

The problem is that it is practically impossible to find the time zone you are looking for.  There are a number of reasons:

1) The table is sorted alphabetically by "Area", which is usually some arbitrarily chosen city within the time zone.  Unless you happen to know that this particular city is in the time zone of interest, you will never be able to find your time zone.

2) It is impossible to change the sorting of the table based on some other column.  (Sorting by Region would in many cases be preferable to sorting by Area.)

3) The actual commonly used names of the time zones (e.g., China Standard Time, Pacific Time, Newfoundland Standard Time, etc.), are not displayed.  Many people will be looking for time zones by their names, not by the names of cities within them.

4) Some people know neither the name of their time zone nor the name of the arbitrarily chosen city within it.  Why not let these people select their location by clicking their location on a map of the world?

Comment 1 Orion Poplawski 2009-03-19 21:27:36 UTC

Also, with the old KDE3 applet you were able to change the timezone with a single click - way too hard now.  Perhaps the list of selected timezones could be displayed and selected when you right click on the widget?

Comment 2 Aaron J. Seigo 2009-03-19 23:32:28 UTC

@Tristan: we just use the widget from libkdeui. reassigning ...

@Orion: scroll wheel; putting it in the context menu would make sense too though. completely separate issue though.

Comment 3 Orion Poplawski 2009-03-20 18:41:19 UTC

(In reply to comment #2)
> @Orion: scroll wheel; putting it in the context menu would make sense too
> though. completely separate issue though.

Interesting.  What if there isn't a scroll wheel?

I see the selected timezones appear in the popup too - that helps though I think my user wants to disable those.

Should I file a bug for the context menu?

Thanks!

Comment 4 Jan Kundrát 2009-11-14 06:31:50 UTC

*** Bug 206701 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5 Jan Kundrát 2009-11-14 06:33:57 UTC

Right, this is not usable at all. When I travel to US, I usually can't find the exact city in the time zone list, so it'd be beneficial to be able to navigate to just all cities in USA instead of seeing stuff from all over the world.

Comment 6 jamundso 2009-11-19 17:00:02 UTC

Created attachment 38444 [details]
The standard Gnome panel clock, showing a nice example of how this can be done. Includes a neat world map projection. :)

(In reply to comment #4)
> *** Bug 206701 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

To clarify - Bug 206701 concerned the tooltip specifically, and not so much the settings of the application. Of course, if the timezone data ties these issues technically, then lumping them in one bug is OK with me.

Comment 7 jamundso 2009-11-19 19:52:05 UTC

*** Bug 179334 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8 John Layt 2010-07-09 09:17:26 UTC

In SC 4.5 you can now search on the full country name which should improve matters.  We're discussing other improvements here at Akademy.

Comment 9 Kai Uwe Broulik 2010-08-31 02:50:59 UTC

Now there‘s a search box, but still, EVERY operating system since now has implemented a map (clickable or not is the other question) but there was a map of the world where you could see the region.
And KDE has just this stupid list...

Comment 10 Christoph Cullmann 2024-09-14 16:17:30 UTC

Hi,

kdelibs (version 4 and earlier) is no longer maintained since a few years.

KDE Frameworks 5 or 6 might already have implemented this wish.

If not, please re-open against the matching framework if feasible or against the application that shows the issue.

We then can still dispatch it to the right Bugzilla product or component.

Greetings
Christoph Cullmann