[svn.haxx.se] · SVN Dev · SVN Users · SVN Org · TSVN Dev · TSVN Users · Subclipse Dev · Subclipse Users · this month's index

Re: [PATCH] Unify human represented timestamp formats.

From: Nuutti Kotivuori <naked_at_iki.fi>
Date: 2002-06-22 22:25:50 CEST

Karl Fogel wrote:
> Nuutti Kotivuori <naked@iki.fi> writes:
>> I made a patch which adds a new function, svn_time_to_human_nts,
>> and then uses it for the places where the date format is mangled
>> for user display.
>>
>> The actual format of the date stamps is:
>> 2002-06-22 11:14:42 +03:00
>
> I'd add weekday in there, it's very important, IMHO (I'm sorry if I
> didn't say that when you were earlier soliciting comments on date
> formats, it was just an oversight.)

You did, I just ignored it :)

> Yes, I know this theoretically opens up a whole can of worms about
> non-English day and month names. But, intercultural offensiveness
> aside, it's *really convenient* to have even just the English, and a
> lot of people in the world understand the short English
> abbreviations "Mon", "Tue", etc.

I must say that I personally hate seeing english weekday or month
names. But I can see how convenient that can be, if weekdays matter.

>> The format can - and should - be changed if a real consensus is
>> gotten for the format.
>
> Okay, I'd like to propose:
>
> Sat 2002-06-22 11:14:42 +03:00

I can do that. But ask everybody else for the consensus on using that.

> Personal aside: I suspect this might be hard to get consensus on,
> but really the ideal thing for human readability (or at least
> English-reader readability) would be to use the month name as well,
> as in:
>
> Sat 22 Jun 2002 11:14:42 +03:00

Well if that's the way one goes, "Sat, 08 Jan 2000 18:31:41 GMT" is
the RFC822 date format. Or, the ctime() format "Sat Jun 22 23:19:29
EEST 2002". There were other, similar, but standardized formats
suggested as well.

> That's _slightly_ more complicated for automated parsers, though, so
> personally I'd have no problem with a redundant format like:
>
> Sat 22 Jun 2002-06-22 11:14:42 +03:00
>
> ...but I suppose that would cause much gnashing of teeth and hurling
> of sticks and stones, right?

Well... yes, from me atleast :)

>> The dubious part is 'svnlook'. Should that use this same function?
>> This means that TZ needs to be set very carefully for it. I'd want
>> some input on this.
>
> Oh, the question is, should it print dates in the server's local
> timezone, or should it print exactly what is stored in the
> repository (which is probably GMT, or maybe some other non-local
> timezone)?

The repository timestamps are GMT, if they were to be let out to the
user as is, which is not going to happen.

> <thinks>
>
> You know, I think we need both options. I'm not sure which should
> be the default, though.

Well, TZ can set these for now.

> Hmmm. I'm beginning to wonder if we don't really need a date format
> string with %-codes, settable from .subversion/config or
> something...

That was the discussion sometime back. There's the problem that if the
date format is customizable, then the machine parsability of any
output which contains dates goes down a bit. But anyway, I'd suppose
that's a post-1.0 issue.

-- Naked

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Sat Jun 22 22:28:22 2002

This is an archived mail posted to the Subversion Dev mailing list.

This site is subject to the Apache Privacy Policy and the Apache Public Forum Archive Policy.