customization (was: [PATCH] Unify human represented timestamp formats.)

On Sat, Jun 22, 2002 at 02:44:26PM -0500, Karl Fogel wrote:
> "Bill Tutt" <rassilon@lyra.org> writes:
>...
> > What needs to happen later is that SVN needs to suck in as many OS
> > specific data about what the end user's date/time formatting preferences
> > are and use those. Sounds like a job for APR if you ask me.
>
> Yes, we should do that. But in the absence of environmental clues, we
> should default to the most useable possible format.
>
> <mantra>
> Giving the user the ability to customize doesn't absolve us from
> the responsibility of choosing good defaults for the non-customized
> case.
> </mantra>
>
> :-)

Heh. Actually, there are very good arguments for *not* allowing
customization. There are quite a few studies that show that customizable UIs
can be quite troublesome.

> If it's a matter of disagreement over whether the weekday name and/or
> month name makes the format more useable, that's fine. But I don't
> know (or don't *think* I know) anyone who prefers not to have those
> words when eye-parsing a date. They're so dang helpful. If we lose
> them, we're simply getting worse, IMHO.

IMO, Nutti should just commit the 'human' patch, but leave the string the
same for now. That will get the structural changes in there, and then the
format can be tweaked after the discussion is done.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
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