[O] bug#11042: 24.0.94; dangerous org manual: parse-time-months and parse-time-weekdays

2012-03-21 Thread Bastien
Hi Michael,

Michael Heerdegen michael_heerde...@web.de writes:

 The org-mode manual under the node The date/time prompt tells:

   [...] The function understands English month and weekday abbreviations.  If
 you want to use unabbreviated names and/or other languages, configure
 the variables `parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays'.

 It doesn't tell how the user can do that.  Even worse,
 `parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays' are not defined as user
 options and undocumented!

 After reading the above section in the org manual, users may replace
 the English names with e.g. German ones in their config.  Seems this
 is not a good idea, as this user question in gnu.emacs.gnus shows:

 http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.gnus/browse_thread/thread/8dde85b5ff3ab454/a02ddb878bfa1eb9

The thread doesn't tell what is wrong with setting `parse-time-months'
and `parse-time-weekdays'.  Can you expand a bit more on this?

 BTW1: maybe a better solution would be to define own variables for
 this purpose in org, instead of letting users change variables in
 parse-time.el.

Org heavily depends on parse-time.el.  Providing a defcustom in Org
that is tied to parse-time.el at the same time is not trivial.

Thanks,

-- 
 Bastien





[O] bug#11042: 24.0.94; dangerous org manual: parse-time-months and parse-time-weekdays

2012-03-21 Thread Michael Heerdegen
Bastien b...@altern.org writes:

 Hi Michael,

 Michael Heerdegen michael_heerde...@web.de writes:

  The org-mode manual under the node The date/time prompt tells:
 
[...] The function understands English month and weekday
  abbreviations.  If
  you want to use unabbreviated names and/or other languages, configure
  the variables `parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays'.
 
  It doesn't tell how the user can do that.  Even worse,
  `parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays' are not defined as user
  options and undocumented!
 
  After reading the above section in the org manual, users may replace
  the English names with e.g. German ones in their config.  Seems this
  is not a good idea, as this user question in gnu.emacs.gnus shows:
 
  http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.gnus/browse_thread/thread/8dde85b5ff3ab454/a02ddb878bfa1eb9

 The thread doesn't tell what is wrong with setting `parse-time-months'
 and `parse-time-weekdays'.  Can you expand a bit more on this?

The thread is not completely visible in google groups, dunno why.
Please read at gnu.emacs.gnus with a newsreader.

The problem was that the user replaced the English names with German
names - instead of adding them to the lists.  This broke Gnus.

Currently, `parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays' are internal
variables with no docstring.  Seems they are not intended to be changed
by the user.  Other packages may rely on the fact that the default
values aren't changed.

If they are supposed to be configured by the user, they should get a
documented defcustom.

At least, the documentation in the org manual _must_ be improved, so
that the user is enabled to do the right thing without breaking anything
else.

  BTW1: maybe a better solution would be to define own variables for
  this purpose in org, instead of letting users change variables in
  parse-time.el.

 Org heavily depends on parse-time.el.  Providing a defcustom in Org
 that is tied to parse-time.el at the same time is not trivial.

Why not?  You could just write a function `org-parse-time-string' that
binds `parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays' accordingly and
calls `parse-time-string'.  Then you would just need to call this new
function from org code.

Regards,

Michael.