>>Personally, I find the repeated AM/PM to be visual clutter, but I'll
>>confess I also occasionally get confused about whether I'm looking at AM
>>or PM, so I agree that the desktop certainly doesn't have it right yet.
>> I wonder if there's some out-of-the box way to avoid confusion without
>>repeating AM/PM?
>
>How about some shading or gradient in the time panel?
>
>>> Might not some users prefer a 24 hour clock rendition of the time?
>
>>Yup, the display of hours is currently locale sensitive, so European
>>users will see 24 hours (unless there's a bug with this, I haven't
>>checked recently!).
>
>There you go then I am an Englishman living the US;) Tying this to locale
>does not make sense to me. There must be all sorts of users who have a
>preference that does not match the locale.
>
A few years ago, I did extensive research on how times are indicated
in various countries. What I found is that it varies much more than
you think. In particular, there is not one uniform European way, and
also that some of the ways which are used do leave some ambiguity.
Additionally, the computer systems which are most widely accepted are
the ones in which the users are able to configure the system in the
way that they are most comfortable- either by conforming to their
national standard, or by adjusting the settings to meet their needs.
Actually, the Windows Control Panel applet "Regional and Language
Options" is a very good pedagogic resource for seeing just what are
the standards or "defaults" from country to country.
Specifics of what I observed in my research are:
-- AM/PM or am/pm is the usual way in the US AND many other countries
-- Military time is another way- using a 24 hr clock. In this case,
times before 10am are shown with a leading zero (like "0800"), but I
believe there is no separator between the hours and minutes.
-- Most countries in Europe (though not all) use a format similar to
military time, but with the ":" to separate hours and minutes and
seconds. Note that some countries do not use a leading zero.
My own feeling is that Chandler should work similar to the Windows
applet, that there should be defaults which make sure the user can
easily visually distinguish between am and pm, and that the user
should have the option to decide how he/she wants to do that.
Net net.. this means that Chandler should have the following options:
1- follow system settings -or- user settings in Chandler override
(WIndows applet or Mac & Unix equivalent)
2- AM/PM -or- am/pm -or- a/p -or- no am/pm
(Note- use "a/p" (like "10:30a") where space is at a premium
(Note- Every time value shown should indicate am/pm, and not just
the first value in a column.)
3- 12 hr -or- 24 hr
4- shading -or- no shading for am/pm
(Note-may cause visual clutter when user has only 1-6 items per day)
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