Hi all,
I forgot to mention this in a previous e-mail:
Formatting dates based on the system locale is BAD, BAD, BAD in a *mutli
user environment*, because you end with both MM/DD and DD/MM and a lot
of confusion.
Whatever step is taken, please consider that multi-user environments
contain usually also multiple locales, en-US being frequently one of the
locales. Please also note, that even the date is often not stored
correctly, because when you enter new data in a new cell (or old cell),
cells might be formatted like MM/DD/YYYY although the user expects
DD/MM/YYYY.
Hope this helps understanding the problem.
Sincerely,
Leonard
Leonard Mada wrote:
Hi all,
Cor Nouws wrote:
Hi *,
...
The current system allows fast working.
With typing in dates, once you know how it works and /or set your
cell formatting / styles correctly, it is OK.
No, it is not OK. If you work in a multi-user, multi-locales
environment, you will feel the heat burning you fingers and mind.
Unfortunately, I do work in a mixed environment (both MS and OOo), and
here dates will always go wrong. [Frequently, depending on how many
users worked on the file, some dates are in one locale, others are in
another, so that one has cells with dates in both the MM/DD/YYYY form
and nearby in the DD/MM/YYYY form.]
In order to avoid formatting errors with numbers, I use non-localised
versions of OOo (or MS Office). At least this way, numbers are
consistent. However, this is not the case with dates. I mainly blame
the office packages for trying to detect a date with partial strings
(like xx/xx or xx-xx or xx.xx). It is less so a problem with whole
strings, except that en-US programs try to format the date as
mm/dd/YYYY, although this is only used in the US. [Decimal numbers
are somehow less of a problem, because everyone knows that x.x is a
decimal number - even in locales where the decimal is written like x,x
- BUT this is different for dates and more annoyingly, a date might be
represented as MM/DD or DD/MM and this is NOT something one can easily
detect.]
I could blame the Americans for having this date format, but, as
Murphy's law says: "Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work." I
would therefore prefer a clean way to enter dates, and not based on a
guessing mechanism that is accurate some 20-30% of the time.
Having the ability to specify, what is a date (e.g. only mm.dd.yy or
mm.dd.yyyy), is the best alternative. I am open to a brainstorming
session, and if anyone comes with a better solution, I would be glad
to support it. But I am also certain, that an automatic guessing
mechanism can never have adequate precision and therefore strongly
recommend against such a mechanism.
Sincerely,
Leonard
The only problems, AFAIAC, arise when pasting data in a
spreadsheet... Which columns or cells will be OK, which not ???
If this is the real problem in general (thus valid for most of the
complaints) that could influence a possible solution.
Kindest regards,
Cor
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