Timestamp in messages not consistent with desktop

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 21:05 +0000, Jorge O. Castro wrote:
> When I come back to my PC and I have queued messages up they read like
> this:
>
> [ICON] Ken VanDine 03:58
>
> My clock says 15:58, I think that the timestamp should follow whatever
> time-format the user has defined in their settings. So if it's normal 12
> hour time it should say 3:58pm or whatever without the leading zero. I
> had to think for a second on what that number was until I realized it
> was the time the message was sent to me.

Hmm, what we did is make it a translatable string so that it would match
your locale. The only place that I think that is configured otherwise
is in specifically the clock settings. I'm not sure if we should be
peaking into the clock settings in GConf and matching those or not.

If we do grab it, I'm not sure how we align the default settings with
the chance that someone has changed it. It seems like matching the
locale is better than any setting.

Ted Gould wrote:
> Hmm, what we did is make it a translatable string so that it would match
> your locale. The only place that I think that is configured otherwise
> is in specifically the clock settings. I'm not sure if we should be
> peaking into the clock settings in GConf and matching those or not.
>

I think there's some merit in following the on-panel clock format. Or
getting the clock format to follow the locale, too :-) What generates
the notification? If it's the clock applet, then surley it already knows
its presentation format?

Spec updated: "If the time is displayed, it should be in the same format (e.g. 12- or 24-hour) as is used by the panel clock."

Marking high, as this will have to be completed before the UI freeze.

This would require an additional dependency, so we'll have to revisit that during the next development cycle.

Sorry, but I can't understand... the timestamp is wrong, it can't be
marked as a wishlist in my opinion

On Wed, 2009-03-18 at 15:48 +0000, Nicolò Chieffo wrote:
> Sorry, but I can't understand... the timestamp is wrong, it can't be
> marked as a wishlist in my opinion

The time stamp is correct, it's just in a different format than the
clock is configured in. It's currently in the locale's settings not
picking up the setting of the clock.

Are you sure?
This is what happens to me: I see 6:46 instead of 18:46 or at least 6:46pm
isn't this wrong? It's not a preference, it's that indicator-applet's
clock has only 12 hours instead of 24

On Wed, 2009-03-18 at 17:47 +0000, Nicolò Chieffo wrote:
> Are you sure?

Yes, but it will have to be translated and put into a language pack.
You may still be seeing the default C translation if it's not translated
for your language.

> This is what happens to me: I see 6:46 instead of 18:46 or at least 6:46pm
> isn't this wrong? It's not a preference, it's that indicator-applet's
> clock has only 12 hours instead of 24

Yes. And for most folks that's fine, they're not looking for IMs that
are over 12 hours old so having it be close to the time that they're in
is fine.

> Yes. And for most folks that's fine, they're not looking for IMs that
> are over 12 hours old so having it be close to the time that they're in
> is fine.

I'm one of the folks who's not fine with it. It's simply directly un-useful for me to have to convert timestamps from 12h to 24h when I receive IMs. The information should be communicated to the user in a way consistent with their locale, and timestamps in particular should not be difficult to write correctly.
You should not and do not need to have .po files or whatever for your format strings for every single language to find the information you need to present such information correctly.

Short version of the above: Marking this as "wishlist" is arrogant. Please reconsider.

Is there a standard system function to make times relative? For example:

   Mary Keller 3m
   Andrew Potts 12m
   Ferry Man 4h

That would be even more useful to me.

Mark

Fixed in 0.1.4. Thanks for all the comments!