Date format regionalization

I hope to do an American English translation once I have some free time. However, what is more importatnt to me is having the option to use the standard date format in the US (mm/dd/yyyy). People can get past the minor differences in spelling but are much more confused by the date format.

Any chance this will be addressed?

Bob

I doubt it. I think the convention used is the standard internet convention.

Your US convention is (mm/dd/yyyy), the UK is (dd/mm/yyyy), Portuguese traditional is (yyyy/mm/dd - the same as the ISO8601 standard), and there are subtle differences in other European countries.

My point: there has to be a common standard, and that isn't necessarily the US convention.

 

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Edit: Forgot to mention the obvious: ISO8601 is now incorporated in PHP5, which (sort of) makes the developers task an 'easy' one.

I was certainly not suggesting that the American standard be adopted over other standards. It's just been my experience that most software allows for date regionalization even at the user level.

Perhaps the internet will make this less an issue but old-timer Americans, unfortunately, still see the US as the source of all standards which is why the metric system failed to catch on here.

Bob

Apologies, Bob.

Missed the crucial keyword 'option', which on re-reading now makes more sense to me. I too have a bunch of 'oldies' who are RTC.

 

It's amazing to me how inflexible Americans are about some things. I honestly thought the metric system would catch on if for no other reason than it is easier to convert from one unit of measure to another. Silly me.

Ask most Americans how many tablespoons are in a cup and you'd see nothing but a blank look most often.

Bob

BobS said

… old-timer Americans, unfortunately, still see the US as the source of all standards

AND

It's amazing to me how inflexible Americans are about some things.

Universal, I'm afraid. The 'oldies' here in Portugal (actually, 50+) still talk about the Escudo (recent) and Salazar (ancient) with nostalgia.

Go figure!

BobS said

It's amazing to me how inflexible Americans are about some things. I honestly thought the metric system would catch on if for no other reason than it is easier to convert from one unit of measure to another. Silly me.

Ask most Americans how many tablespoons are in a cup and you'd see nothing but a blank look most often.

Bob

16  

Very good!! You, sir, are in rare company. Was it a guess or did you actually know the answer?

friendly said

16  

BobS said

Very good!! You, sir, are in rare company. Was it a guess or did you actually know the answer?

friendly said

16  

Thanks, but I'll 'fess up…

At first there was this blank stare…
then the lightbulb went on…
then went on google and voila…
16

Sorry neither my steaks or my company are rare but I do use the metric system when I have to - like when in the company of science minded persons.


When I was a kid we were all suppose to be using the metric system by the time we became adults (I'm way past adult by this stage) but then we were also all supposed to be traveling in flying cars and having robots pick up after us at home weren't we?

No date formats are hard-coded, it'll be through lang strings. More info in internationalisation tutorial.

It's funny the US sticks to our old system whilst we've moved on, but we still don't have metric time .

Chris Graham said

It's funny the US sticks to our old system whilst we've moved on, but we still don't have metric time .

I just realized that i want a star-date option.  

Bob

Chris Graham said

It's funny the US sticks to our old system whilst we've moved on, but we still don't have metric time .

Yeah, give us the 100-hour clock and I'll feel as if I'm living longer. Not that that is necessarily a good thing!

In response to Bob's initial 'option' request, I hunted down a form I use for a vanilla-flavoured HTML website I built for a charming matron. It actually does exactly what Bob was proposing:


Can something similar be incorporated into the core of ocPortal?