Re: [Evolution] 24h date display

[Eric Lambart <ximian nomeaning net>]

On Fri, 2002-10-18 at 00:32, Christian Borup wrote:
> On fre, 2002-10-18 at 01:03, John Angelmo wrote:
> > Fre 2002-10-18 klockan 00.52 skrev Jeffrey Stedfast:
> > > On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 18:21, John Angelmo wrote:
> > > > I seem to have lost the function for displaying 24 hour format in the
> > > > mail part, there's no problem with the calender
> > > > Where can I find that function?
> > >
> > > There's no option for this as far as I know.

And that's truly a pity (and a pita).

> > It would be great to have it, I and several othere users have no need
> > for AM/PM it's just in the way, an option for regular 24h or AM/PM would
> > be great to have that would effect the whole Evolution not just the
> > calender
>
> The date display in the mailer follows the locale (as indeed it should).
> If you set LC_TIME to a locale that doesn't use AM/PM, you will get 24h
> times (I use LC_TIME=da_DK - works fine).

I agree with you, Christian, that the default should follow the locale,
but what about those of us who don't want to be stuck with the stupid
AM/PM thing even if it is conventional in our part of the world (for
example in the United States)?  What about the US military and other
American organizations who use a standard 24-hr clock?  What about a
foreigner living in the US (there are a few...) who needs to work in
English but wants his/her familiar time/date format?

I don't want to use LC_TIME set to some other region (such as en_GB),
because I happen to be quite comfortable with our local mm/dd/yy date
format, which doesn't take up any more or less space in a column anyway.

I'd also like to get rid of the stupid "Yesterday" and "Today" strings
that we have here, what's wrong with just displaying the "Date" columns
as "MM-DD-YY HH:MM" (or DD-MM-YY HH:MM, etc., as you prefer)?  All the
extra bullshit just makes the "Date" columns far too wide, restricting
much more important and useful information such as the "From" and
"Subject" fields.

I really think this should be an Evolution-wide customizable option for
the date and time format.  Doesn't MS Lookout offer these options?

Not surprisingly, this has been discussed before:
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/evolution/2001-February/005562.html

I'm still hoping the preference setting Damon mentioned will appear some
day.

Eric

P.S.
I don't have the time or patience to maintain and compile my own patched
versions of evolution, so my interim solution (which has helped a lot)
was to build my own version of en_US/LC_TIME which forces Evolution (&
everything else which respects glibc locales) to use a 24 hr clock in
the US.  If anyone would be interested in having a copy, let me know
(but use at your own risk!).  I now have much more space for other
columns in the message list, and that makes me very happy =)

-- 
I have nothing against the American people... 
...but it is time for a regime change