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Custom date format for fields?


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I would dearly love to have the option to set a custom date format for the date/time fields. The addition of the YYYY-MM-DD (ISO) format in 1.8 has been a big (and required) progress for me, but still I sometimes would like to use other formats (in my case, YYYYMMDD or YYYY which I use for automated version and copyright information, respectively).

Of course, same request for Designer, too.

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+1

I still wonder that there are various menus with lists of languages & possible but limited, selected formats only – instead of a user-definable format by using placeholder characters (Y, M, m, D, d, H, ... etc.) and custom separators (. - – _ / , ), as example...

YYYY    Year as a four-digit string
YY         Year as a two-digit string
MM       Month as a two-digit string
mon      Localised Month (e.g. "August")
mmm    Month as a localized three-character string (e.g. "Aug")
DD         Day of the month as a two-digit string
day        Localized day of the week (e.g. “Wednesday”)
ddd       Localized short form (usually three-character string) of the day of the week (e.g. “Wed”)
HH        Hour in 24-hour notation as a two-digit string
HH12    Hour in 12-hour notation as one- or two-digit string
AMPM  AM/PM designation
MIN      Minutes as a two-digit string

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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@thomaso: Maybe the problem is that there are so many formatting options out there, more or less one convention per programming or sript language … so, hard to decide which one to use 🙂. But I feel that in many software packages, quite outside the realm of Serif, date/time formatting is an underrated issue.

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To me the UI to access the options is simply too complex because hidden/nested in menus. I assume it's related to an idea of "common" use but doesn't feel like a professional software this way, especially in APub, which delivers mainly efficiency features rather than creation, compared to AD and APh. The restriction to languages in menus requires a cumbersome workflow.

While it makes sense for auto-generated text characters (day, month) it appears as a strange limitation for the number of digits and types of separators.

So one has to click through various menus to find and select the wanted. As if it would be illegal, forbidden or wrong to use certain types in specific countries. This results in many duplicated menu entries and even in duplicates within one language.

2071595753_fielddate1.jpg.8350ea8cc72a65329e96fd1a503cd21f.jpg  

Why should I be limited in Italian to 2 digits for the year? Why do I need to select Português if I want 4 instead? Why shall I need to choose e.g. Dutch for a certain separator?

867227915_fielddate2.jpg.7e0cc490d2086600bb7e22339525c37f.jpg - 1326145274_fielddate3.jpg.4ff60de7f7873bfbdc99e490dc72ddae.jpg - 100186805_fielddate4.jpg.59a95e6254486e14044d09fc38bfdc7a.jpg

Note: none of these results is available if choosing German for instance. Because these separators aren't allowed in this language?
Compare the UI for quotation mark selection, which is not restricted to languages for a good reason:

521192868_quotationmarksmenu.jpg.86bd89bb1b512b0cde0ded549300a70c.jpg

 

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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11 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Why should I be limited in Italian to 2 digits for the year? Why do I need to select Português if I want 4 instead? Why shall I need to choose e.g. Dutch for a certain separator?

867227915_fielddate2.jpg.7e0cc490d2086600bb7e22339525c37f.jpg - 1326145274_fielddate3.jpg.4ff60de7f7873bfbdc99e490dc72ddae.jpg - 100186805_fielddate4.jpg.59a95e6254486e14044d09fc38bfdc7a.jpg

 

Czech (see spaces): 10. 8. 2020 😉

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Yes, that is one more point though only a light inconvenience for my use case. But I agree that  date/time formats should not be coupled to language (a preference for the typical date format of the region would be more logical, but still unnecessary, see below). Anyway, the date format expected by my customer expects may follow any old whim or tradition on his side, so I need to be as flexible as possible in this respect. Also, I may have up to 4 different languages in my documents but keep commmon date/time formats, so binding format to language makes even less sense.

What I am thinking is that the list of displayed formats could be set in a general preference that carries over into a document-specific list. I need about 8 or 10 such formats, maybe 20 at most (this includes custom formats for special purposes like the aforementioned copyright date), and all other possible formats are just ballast from my POV. I think my general preference would end up with 5 or 6 formats, the rest would be document-specific.

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1 hour ago, Lutz Pietschker said:

Yes, that is one more point though only a light inconvenience for my use case. (...)
I need about 8 or 10 such formats, maybe 20 at most

I might misunderstand you but to me the fact that formats are prepared by the app as a set of limited set of limited options causes the major inconvenience for you. Even if the given combination of digits and separators would not require a language selections but be in a long list for instance then you still might want to use one which isn't listed.

This is why I'd expect APub to offer an UI instead which enables the user to choose the format entirely self-defined. Instead picking from a lists of ready-made styles the user could put the content together in a modular system, with free choice to combine a custom number of digits and separators.

Compare the UI in the text fields for Bullets & Numbering or for Find & Replace. There the UI even for special, 'invisible' glyphs got solved with a graphical interface (and doesn't require but also offers the use of REGEX).
1871985129_fields-bulletsandnumbering.jpg.2461e44d46b24b0b61682aade1acabf6.jpg - 1333141799_fields-findandreplace.jpg.cf18fd51d912baca7101e60c72fd8329.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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18 minutes ago, AndersonSmith66 said:

How do I change the default date format in a CSV file?

Open it in Excel or another spreadsheet application and change it there...or use a text editor capable of regex or after it is brought into APub and use its regex find/replace...

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