[pmwiki-users] Conditional Directive based on time - standards

[Waylan Limberg]

Just adding my thoughts. Of all the suggestions made (before and after
the below email) I like what is proposed here the best. I particularly
agree with Neil's comments on those suggestions less one: I could care
less if dates could optionally have dashes (2005-10-14), slashes
(2005/10/14) etc. the numbers only (20051014) is fine by me.

On 10/13/05, Neil Herber <nospam at eton.ca> wrote:
> My comments interspersed below ...
>
> At 2005-10-13  10:04 AM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
> >AFAIK, both of the existing calendar recipes (PmCal and WikiCalendar)
> >produces page names in the form yyyymmdd, so I think we ought to
> >stick with that format, or at least make sure it's allowed.  In
> >particular, it might be nice to be able to write something like
> >
> >     (:if date {$Name}:) Today's events: (:if:)
> >
> >so that "Today's events" only displays on the page corresponding to
> >the current date.
> >
> >However, I don't have a problem with setting the date code to
> >ignore non-digit characters altogether, so that one can write any
> >of 20051014, 2005-10-14, 2005/10/14, or 2005.10.14 and have things
> >work out correctly.
>
> For all the obvious benefits, I use ISO-formatted dates whenever
> possible. To conserve space I use 20051013. To make things more
> readable, I use 2005-10-13. If either or both worked, that would be great.
>
> At the risk of creeping featuritis, perhaps there could be a
> (:datespaced:) directive that could convert 20051013 to 2005-10-13
> for display. Not sure how to distinguish between dates and other sets
> of numbers ....

Oh, and one other thing. Maybe I missed something, but what would we
be displaying dates for. Isn't this just a logical wrapper for
content. It wouldn't actually be generating content would it? Guess I
don't see the value or purpose of this suggestion. That's all.
>
> >To be consistent with the (:include:) markup, I'm also thinking that
> >we should specify ranges with "..", thus
> >
> >     (:if date 20051014..20051020:)    Oct 14 through Oct 20
> >     (:if date 20051014..:)            On or after Oct 14
> >     (:if date ..20051020:)            On or before Oct 20
>
> These are excellent - compact, easy to read, and unambiguous.
>
> >I'm not yet a big fan of the "before", "after", "future", "past",
> >"between", etc. keywords--I don't think they're obvious on their
> >face and still require explanation.  (We can always add keyword-based
> >times later if we decide we need them.)
>
> In English, time related keywords are horribly ambiguous. I would
> ignore them for a long time.
>
> >I like offset dates--i.e.,  "+30days", "+2months", "+1year",
> >but they may be left for the second iteration of the code.
> >The interpretation of something like "20051005..+10days"
> >should probably be "ten days starting with Oct 5", thus "Oct 5
> >through Oct 14".
>
> Offsets just seem to reintroduce ambiguity. If an event starts on
> 20051013 and runs for 5 days do I type "20051013..+5days"? My brain
> tells me that that should be the same as "20051013..20051018" (13
> plus 5 equals 18), but what I really want is "20051013..20051017".
>
> >I doubt we'll have "today", "tomorrow", etc. substitutions for
> >a while -- they may just cause too much confusion.
>
> Agreed.
>
> >I'm still on the fence about truncated dates and allowing time
> >specifiers.  It's not an implementation problem, but enough people
> >have said that they'd like dates-always-in-one-format that
> >I'm reluctant to include the extended forms by default.  Perhaps it
> >will be an option for the wikiadmin, or maybe a different (:if:)
> >condition name that says the extra date/time formats are okay.
> >
> >     (:if date_t 200510..2006:)         # 2005-Oct-01 through 2006-Dec-31
> >     (:if date_t ..2005-10-13T12:00 :)   # until noon on 2005-Oct-13
>
> I would vote for a single date-only format to start with time added
> as a local option (if demand exists). For local wikis, time may be
> useful, but for geographically dispersed wikis things start to get
> complicated. The dates and times are relative to the server clock,
> not to the location of the reader.
>
> Several of my wikis have users in Eastern North America  and Europe,
> but the time difference is small enough (6 hours) that it is
> generally the same day for all users during daylight hours.
>
>
> Neil
>
> Neil Herber
> Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
> Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
> Tel: (613) 829-4668
>
>
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--
----
Waylan Limberg
waylan at gmail.com