[Telepathy] [empathy] message timestamp format

[Guillaume Desmottes]

Le lundi 12 juillet 2010 à 23:57 +0200, Nicolo' Chieffo a écrit :
> Hello, I'm here to discuss about the possibility to change the
> timestamp format of incoming and outgoing messages.
> The bug link is here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=623934

Hi Nicolo, thanks for investigating this.

> Currently in empathy defines in empathy-time.h the default format of
> time and date:
> #define EMPATHY_TIME_FORMAT_DISPLAY_SHORT "%H:%M"
> #define EMPATHY_TIME_FORMAT_DISPLAY_LONG  "%a %d %b %Y"
> 
> As you can see, those formats are static and does not depend on the
> current locale.
> For example in USA %H:%M is not the preferred format, because they use
> 12 hour plus AM/PM.
> The same for the date, which is not "day" "number" "month" "year", but
> "day" "month" "number" "year".
> 
> Currently the time is generated using strftime which is capable of
> handling the preferred locale format using the following combinations:
> %X the preferred time format without date (including seconds)
> %x the preferred date format without time (expressed using numbers)
> %c the complete time format with date and time (expressed in abbreviated names)
> 
> EXAMPLES:
> %X
>    en_US.utf8 = 11:44:26 PM
>    it_IT.utf8 = 23:44:26
> 
> %x
>    en_US.utf8 = 07/12/2010
>    it_IT.utf8 = 12/07/2010
> 
> %c
>    en_US.utf8 = Mon 12 Jul 2010 11:45:39 PM CEST [*]
>    it_IT.utf8 = lun 12 lug 2010 23:47:33 CEST
> 
> [*] this is actually a bug because it should be Jul 12, and it is
> correct using en_US without the utf8 modifier
> 
> Actually the best replacements would be
> #define EMPATHY_TIME_FORMAT_DISPLAY_SHORT "%X"
> #define EMPATHY_TIME_FORMAT_DISPLAY_LONG  "%x"
> 
> a) unfortunately %X adds the seconds, which are now hidden

I don't think it's *that* annoying. Anyone here would feel bad if he'd
see seconds?
 
> b) I'd choose %x because %c is a little too verbose, and originally
> EMPATHY_TIME_FORMAT_DISPLAY_LONG does not contain the time. It is
> actually used when searcing for chat logs to display the date of the
> conversation. Unfortunately the previous way to show also showed the
> day name.

I think not displaying the day name would be more of an issue. It's
valuable information imho.
Maybe we could use "%a %x" ?

> Actually I don't know any other way of following the locale preferred
> formats, so these are the only possibilities to choose.
> 
> I'd also like to point out an improvement we can make: when displaying
> logs, we should automatically append the date to the messages.
> I have this opinion because when I open a chat window, some logs
> appear automatically (actually 4 or 5, I don't remember). I'd really
> think that displaying also the date in the logs (it it's different
> than today) would really be a good improvement, and I think it can be
> changed without much work.
> If you agree I'll try to handle this and propose a patch (I'll can the
> work in a few days).

Sounds good to me. Could you please open a bug about that? Extra
pingouin points if you have a patch as well :)

thanks!


	G.