[Accepted] Localisation for Date Formats

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Pazza starts to complain... Kinda reminds you of Sloans dont it?

[halcinlatsmir]

Hi,

Would it be possible to introduce some date format customisation?  Currently WIM only shows dates in the MM/DD/YYYY format.  This is very confusing.  I would like to suggest an option to select one of the following formats:

DD/MM/YYYY
MM/DD/YYYY
YYYY/MM/DD


P.S. Great addon 

[Pazza]

I am going to bump this just so I can remember to get to it. I am not sure how I am going to implement this yet. Unfortunately when I coded it, it was hard coded. Sorry. American ignorance if you may.

I promise I will get to it however.

[Steve]

From what I can tell there are two options:

(1) Since the dates are static and in a single variable, there's not really a more generic format you could save them in, the only way to optimize speed at the cost of memory would be to put d/m/y in an array for each saved date.  The best way I can think of to do this would be to give them an option window on the first new load asking them if they would like to change their date format.  If they chose to, on the first date change, it would go through all saved dates and change them to an array format (in favor of saving processing time for later history viewing), set a variable to save that the old dates have been updated, and proceed with saving dates in this new format.  If they chose no, it would continue with the old format until they chose to update.  As you can see, this is a lot of work.

(2) The much easier way of handling this situation is to continue saving dates in the old format, and just change them to the new format when it's time for the date to be displayed.  This would slightly lengthen processing time to generate the history since this option uses the string library, but would be overall easier for the user and easier for you (neglecting the extra processing time for viewing history).  To do this option, all that needs to be done is to add an option for date format, add a simple function to change the date format, and update 5 lines in WIM_History.lua.

Here's a sample of idea 2 (minus the new option in the options menu):

Code:

function WIM_NewDate(olddate)
local d = string.sub(olddate, 4, 5)
local m = string.sub(olddate, 1, 2)
local y = string.sub(olddate, 7, 8)

if (WIM_Data.DateFormat == 0) then
return olddate;
elseif (WIM_Data.DateFormat == 1) then
return d.."/"..m.."/"..y;
elseif (WIM_Data.DateFormat == 2) then
return y.."/"..m.."/"..d;
end
end

and update lines 64, 135, 137, 139, 141 in WIM_History.lua


Or then again, maybe you can think of a better way to handle date formats .
Only you can decide.

EDIT:  when you add a localized date option, you should include an option to select whether you want "-" or "/" to separate the date.

[Pazza]

My burden is where to put these options... lol. WIM has gotten quite bloated with options. I either need to redesign my options window or start removing some obvious options. /Shrug. I'll figure somthing out...

To be honest, I was thinking of taking the route of adding a varible in the localization files where our translators can just supply their countries standard of date formatting.

Options are great, but sometimes... eh... too many can be annoying. for the user and the developer.

Thanks for your ideas. I would probably take the second route that you suggested.