Jim Allan wrote:
Brian Barker wrote:
At 10:54 14/11/2008 -0500, Dale Robertson wrote:
The most sensible format for today in numeric form is 2008/11/14
(ISO ...
Just in the interests of accuracy, ISO 8601 requires that the
separators - if they are used - be hyphens: 2008-11-14. This is one
of the formats provided by OpenOffice, of course - though not the
default in many (most?) locales.
Locales are partly bogus. The basic idea is that there are standards
used within particular areas, usually countries, by about 99% of the
people. But it's not true. In fact, people often vary widely within
countries and even within individual communities.
Canada is mostly metric, but paper measurements are mostly in inches.
Canadian dictionaries generally represent both US-specific spellings
and Oxford UK-specific spellings as both correct. Sometimes, however
they reject a particular US spelling or a particular UK spelling.
Date formats are up to you. I generally use ISO formats, with hyphens,
as the most readable and as a format that will sort properly when in
text format, as when part of a file name. And I know it won't be
misinterpreted by the reader, as the four-digit year number indicates
the order.
But because locale formats demand a single value, the experts have to
select one usage, usually following some federal government standard.
(Even federal government standards are not in agreement on every
issue.) About all you can get from the values in a locale is that the
default values set in that locate are at least acceptable in the area
that the locale purports to cover. In some places that date formatting
may be used by 99% of the people. In others, it may be 51% or even less.
Even within the US, there are companies that have gone metric
internally, regardless of what the locale says.
Jim Allan
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Quite true. All the more important for OOo to provide a setting for the
user (or the company IT staff). **After 3 major versions, the developers
should have figured this out.**
OOo can copy the user’s personalized colors and fonts from the OS, so
the user has a consistent desktop décor. (And to help with accessibility
issues.) It it should not be that hard to do this for dates and times, too.
One way to do this: Provide a check box for the ISO date and time style.
Provide a check box for the style found in the logged-in user’s
preferences in the OS. Provide a check box for the “OOo official” style
belonging to the locale of the current paragraph. Provide a check box
for a custom style, and the means to edit it. Allow the style to be
saved in the document, for users who have to deal with many companies
and their idiosyncrasies.
If this has already been done, please tell me how to import or create my
date and time style.
——Eli
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
