Well he makes a point on the redability of reports using the ISO date format. I think its all just depending on what you make. If you have a multy coparate miljoin dollar cross global sales system you would want to go for the ISO standard for dates but in most other cases you would just use TDateTime and let the end user display it in his format. I gess it was just the point Graeme was making.
I still enjoyed the discussion guys :-) Met vriendelijke groet, Pieter Valentijn Delphidreams http://www.delphidreams.nl -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: Michael Van Canneyt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Verzonden: donderdag 1 maart 2007 9:00 Aan: [email protected] Onderwerp: Re: [lazarus] StrToDate error On Thu, 1 Mar 2007, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: > Hi, > > On 2/28/07, Michael Van Canneyt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > You should not have to worry about it. You use TDateTime, and > > convert to string as needed as the user sees fit. > > > > I don't agree with Graeme's solution: it's not up to the programmer > > to decide how the date/time is shown to the user. The user has > > decided that for us when he configured his regional/localization > > settings. > > Both you and Peter V. misunderstood my post slightly. You don't have > to force the user to see the date/time in a certain format. Though we > opted for it after a length discussion. Storing the date/time as a > string in the ISO 8601 format is forced and allows you to export data > to another application without having to try and guess the date format > in the new application (yyyymmdd, ddmmyyyy, mmddyyyy, etc). You don't need to guess if it's in the database native format ? > > Once the string date/time is read and converted it to a TDateTime, > the GUI can displays it in the way the user specified in their > regional settings, but as soon as it goes back to the database or some > file, it gets converted back to the ISO string format. > > So bottom line, the user sees the date/time it the format they prefer. > This is the first choice. We opted to follow the ISO > 8601recommendation for display as well, to help remove confusion > between various date formats in digital or hardcopy form. To me this sounds contradictory :-) "the user sees the date/time it the format they prefer." "We opted to follow the ISO 8601recommendation for display as well" Which one is it ? You can't have both :-) > > Imagine the following case: > The user in USA generates a report with date/time columns as a PDF > document. Emails that to head office in the EU somewhere where in > changes hands a few times. Now how do we know what date format that > report used? > > Is 02-06-2002 the 2nd June or is it 6th Feb? So when is the deadline > for the multi-million dollar contract? :-) If it uses the ISO 8601 > format yyyy-mm-dd there is no confusion, hence the reason we opted for > that format in our applications (display on screen and paper and in > storage). So, the user has no choice... ? (not trying to argue here, but your statements seem contradictory to me. But that's probably me :/) Michael. _________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives _________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
