Time/date display for comments

[sharpiefan]

Being British, I don't like the way that the date in comments in my journal is displayed the American way, with the month first. Is there any way of changing it from '10-24-2010' to either '24/10/2010' or '24th Oct 2010'?

Comments

[thedeadcat]

Uhm. Yes. Mine was actually British until I switched it back. (Only because first thing in the morning I am easily baffled, as my brain runs on caffeine and the tank is empty at that point.)

*goes poking* I swear I remember where this is...

It appears that I don't remember where the function is. Dammit! I hope someone replies to this who's smarter than I am on a Sunday.

[matgb]

I am British, and my layout says this entry was posted Oct. 24th, 2010 18:52.

So, um, yeah. I know it's possible, at least on Tabula Rasa based layouts. I'll go have a poke.

[matgb]

Oh, wait. In comments.

I have checked, mine displays wrong as well, I'd never noticed. This must be fixed.

I cannot find it as an option anywhere, which suggests it doesn't exist. I will investigate further.

[sporky_rat]

I just put this in as a suggestion.

[sharpiefan]

Cheers. It's been bugging me that comment dates and journal entry dates display differently and you can change the one but not the other.

I'd've suggested it myself, but I wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something obvious. :D

[marahmarie]

Never noticed that, either, until you said so. US time on entries, British on comments. How...special. I just looked through the customization wizard and my layers (and DW FAQs and some DW Coalition documentation) and I can't find a thing to change/modify...I know on certain layouts on LJ (Smooth Sailing comes to mind, maybe some others) the customization wizard let you decide the time display format yourself...

[sharpiefan]

How very weird. I've got UK-type time display on entries and US-type time display on comments. That just seems all sorts of wrong, somehow.

I could change the date/time display format on my old Flexible Squares layout on LJ and I'm sure it was possible with other layouts too.

[marahmarie]

It comes down to (or wait...it might, but I don't really know) something that's set in here:

http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/layersource?id=97851

Specifically:

##===============================
## Display settings - text
##===============================

propgroup text_child {
property string[] datetime_format_group {
des = "Date and time format";
grouptype = "datetime";
}
set datetime_format_group = ["date_format", "time_format"];
property string date_format {
des = "Date";
values = "%%yyyy%%.%%mm%%.%%dd%%|2010.31.01|%%dd%%.%%mm%%.%%yyyy%%|01.31.2010|%%dd%%.%%mm%%.%%yy%%|01.31.10|%%mm%%.%%dd%%.%%yyyy%%|31.01.2010|%%mm%%.%%dd%%.%%yy%%|31.01.10|long|January 31st, 2010|long_day|Sunday, January 31st, 2010";
grouped = 1;
}
property string time_format {
des = "Time";
values = "short|06:30pm|%%HH%%:%%min%%|18:30";
grouped = 1;
}
property string character_before {
des = "Symbol or character to display before links in modules and before entry metadata";
}
}

set date_format = "%%yyyy%%.%%mm%%.%%dd%%";
set time_format = "short";
set character_before = "♦ ";

But my s2-fu is all out of whack so I can barely recall what I'm looking at there...I'm just thinking it's wrong somehow - but why it would flip UK users US-formatted dates on entries and UK-formatted comments and vice versa for US users is quite beyond me...I'm thinking it's something else going on that isn't in the above code (maybe...I just had to find and copy the code I know of that controls date-time format into one of these comments or I was going to rip my hair out for wanting to look at it).

Gets worse...

[marahmarie]

The date-time is in US format on view-recent (for me, anyway, as a US user), but not on reply mode pages or on individual comments themselves; those flip to UK format.

Re: Gets worse...

[sharpiefan]

I've got the exact reverse: I'm a UK user. Entry dates display in UK format, but comment dates flip to US format.

I don't get it. At all.

Re: Gets worse...

[marahmarie]

It's not specific to DW, if that makes it any better (how it flips for UK and US users might be specific to DW, but not the rest of it)...I just checked, and the behavior is exactly the same on LiveJournal. Which makes it an old, old bug (perfectly ancient, in fact).

Re: Gets worse...

[sharpiefan]

Entries in my LJ are set to display the UK format - and comments to those entries in my LJ also display the UK format. Which is exactly what doesn't happen here on DW.

Though I can't say as to the rest.

Re: Gets worse...

[marahmarie]

Well, I'm not sure what layout you use on LJ, but I checked s2_bloggish and it displays the date/time in US format on entries and in UK format on comments and in reply mode.

Re: Gets worse...

[twisted_times]

I'm a UK user and the initial post has the date listed as Oct. 24th, 2010 18:52.

Your comment is listed as 2010-10-24 23:25 (local).


Personally, I'd prefer dates to be listed as dddd/mmmm/yyyy, e.g. Monday 25th October 2010.

[ninetydegrees]

Something that'll make you happy I hope: there's already a bug filed to make it possible to customize the date and time format in your journal - an use non-US formats - and I hope I'll be able to work on it soon. Unfortunately, styles bugs are sometimes connected so you have to put some on the backburner till others get fixed. And I'll stop rambling now. :)

Edit: and to answer your question, you need to add this to a theme or a user layer:

function Comment::time_display (string datefmt, string timefmt) : string {
return $this->time_display("med", $timefmt, false);
}

[twisted_times]

Out of curiosity, will "non-US formats" also include thing like Jewish, Muslim, Japanese and Chinese calendars?

[ninetydegrees]

No, they won't. This bug only concerns formatting. If you want to be able to have dates written in a non-Gregorian calendar (and other types of numerals than the ones currently used), you'll have to suggest it.

[twisted_times]

Fair enough - I can imagine a few people would like to have alternative date formats, and/or dual date format displays. IIRC, there's a specific chunk of Perl or PHP coding that does it automatically.

[twisted_times]

By "it", I mean convert from Gregorian date formats to others.

Found it for Perl:
http://search.cpan.org/~morty/DateConvert-0.16/Convert.pm

...and for PHP:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/calendar.constants.php

[marahmarie]

Oh, thank you for this. When I get a chance I'll work on the code (or just add it - does this "fix" the date/time format to US or UK throughout, or am I missing something - since I don't see the format written out in the code?). :)

[ninetydegrees]

This will make the time in comments display in the same format you have on your entries.

The format is set to "med". Med is a pre-set format which corresponds to "Oct. 28th, 2010".

[marahmarie]

Oh, OK. Will give it a shot - thanks. :)

ETA: works like a charm! Lovely to have an answer to the problem I never knew I had until I read the OP - thanks again.