+ExTechOp Posted October 29, 2005 Share Posted October 29, 2005 I'm sure this has been requested several times before, but here it is again: make the date format an user-adjustable parameter like the local timezone and the miles/kilometers setting are. Living in Finland, we normally use day-month-year, and in other parts of the globe year-month-day is also very popular. The US system of using month-day-year can be very confusing for people from other parts of the world unless one stops to think about it. Link to comment
+Glenn Posted October 29, 2005 Share Posted October 29, 2005 I grew up with the US date system and I have visited other countries that use different date systems. The differences in the American and European date systems do take a little getting used to, but it is far from very confusing. Link to comment
+Prime Suspect Posted October 30, 2005 Share Posted October 30, 2005 I grew up with the US date system and I have visited other countries that use different date systems. The differences in the American and European date systems do take a little getting used to, but it is far from very confusing. I remember reading something almost exactly like that, back on 04/05/03. Link to comment
+Glenn Posted October 30, 2005 Share Posted October 30, 2005 Why don't we all just use the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, at 12:00:00 a.m UTC. No worries about date formats, languages, or time zones. Link to comment
+ekhoc Posted October 30, 2005 Share Posted October 30, 2005 I remember reading something almost exactly like that, back on 04/05/03. Good example of a date which could be confusing. As the separators are consistent, it is possible to understand that 04/05/03 means 5.4.03 instead of 03-05-04 I agree with ExTechOp - it would be nice to have the date format as a user adjustable parameter, or to have a default format which could not be misunderstood, like 05-Apr-2003 - hardly misreadable as 04-May-2003 Link to comment
+ExTechOp Posted October 30, 2005 Author Share Posted October 30, 2005 (edited) I agree with ExTechOp - it would be nice to have the date format as a user adjustable parameter, or to have a default format which could not be misunderstood, like 05-Apr-2003 - hardly misreadable as 04-May-2003 Using the ISO 8601 standard convention of yyyy-mm-dd would have an advantage of not having to remember english month names -- many languages use quite similar (latin-derived) names, but for example finnish does not. Edited October 30, 2005 by ExTechOp Link to comment
+Glenn Posted October 30, 2005 Share Posted October 30, 2005 I agree with ExTechOp - it would be nice to have the date format as a user adjustable parameter, or to have a default format which could not be misunderstood, like 05-Apr-2003 - hardly misreadable as 04-May-2003 Using the ISO 8601 standard convention of yyyy-mm-dd would have an advantage of not having to remember english month names -- many languages use quite similar (latin-derived) names, but for example finnish does not. There are still ambiguities with ISO 8601, here is RFC 3339. You're not going to be able to please all of the people all of the time. Link to comment
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