RE: [libreoffice-users] French/English date

Hi Tom,

I've never done extensions of this sort before and I'd probably need some
help with header files/ libraries etc. and while I don't have a lot of free
time I do love fiddling and I'd love to give it a try. Who knows, I might
even learn something new.

Even if I could get something together that worked say for windows operating
systems I don't think it would be too hard to port that to other systems.

The way I imagine it would work is say for calc you could open the cell
format dialog and select numbers and then date and in the custom edit box
create you personalised format but it would be good if you could then save
that format with a friendly name and make it your default long or short date
format. Maybe that's a bit too much. But that's sort of where we need to go
or at least something along that line.
Even if there were no default options you could select a range of cells and
set the format to "my schmiko long date".

This is an approach that would fit many different cultures and it would be
possible to allow for customisation for ordinals in different languages by
creating an ordinal(number, language) object and for silly old farts like
me, allow for adding specific quoted texts to the custom format.
The ordinal function could become a format style of it's own. Select a cell
- format "Ordinal".

When you think about it we're almost there, we can already create custom
formats but not with ordinals and I don't think it is possible at the moment
to save custom formats.

Do you think this is a feasible and worthwhile project?
If I could get help in getting started I'd most certainly give it a go.
Maybe code samples of other extensions.
I probably should start by downloading the source code for LO but I wouldn't
need all that code.

I started out many years ago programming in assembler but now days I program
almost exclusively for the dot net or mono platforms and I can't even
remember how to spell things like pop, peek, push, poke or jump. :-)    (mmm
I'm not sure --- was there a 'Poke'?)

Cheers,

Bruce Carlson

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, 1 December 2011 11:14 AM
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] French/English date

Hi :)
Bruce, that sounds as though you could easily make an extension for this? 
Macros are in Basic but C# is better.  Surely Extensions can be in C#?
Regards from
Tom :)


--- On Wed, 30/11/11, Bruce Carlson <bruce@grahamgroup.com.au> wrote:

From: Bruce Carlson <bruce@grahamgroup.com.au>
Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] French/English date
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Wednesday, 30 November, 2011, 23:47

HI,
It may have been some  years between Brian going to school and my school
days and also I may have had teachers who were already old fashion then too,
however at all my schools we were told that you should always try to write
sentences as if you were speaking them.
That meant you should always include the articles and punctuation marks.
It was acceptable to write some long numbers in numeric format such as the
year and financial/currency amounts.

Over time short hand expressions have become more and more acceptable due to
expedience however there are still many of us who feel that something is
missing when we read or write long date formats without the articles.
Please don't confuse long date formats with shorthand formats. they both
have their specific uses.
I agree that there should not be a full stop after the ordinal ie: st, th or
rd but in most word processors today the only way to make the ordinal jump
up to the subscript area like when using 2 for square or 3 for cube is to
add the full stop and then a space.

As much as I agree with most of Tom's comments on this subject I still like
to see the articles ("the" and "of") and the comma after the month name and
a full stop at the end but only if it is the end of the sentence.
Maybe I'm getting too close to retirement age. :-)

The original point of this thread was date formats in French and we seem to
be forgetting that it is localisation of formats in all languages and
customs that is under question.
I'd personally like to see an attempt at  improving this function and it is
not only in word processors where you can free type any format you choose
but also in spread sheets and databases etc. where the system is doing the
formatting.
A greater ability to create custom formats would help, especially if the
ability to include ordinals in multiple language styles is introduced and it
would good if LO was to take an international lead in this area.
In lot of custom format functions I've seen you can add specific text by
wrapping the text in inverted commas so adding articles to custom formats is
possible.

If anyone would like it I'd happily post my c# code for long date formats
and ordinal functions that I use in database front end applications. If I
dig deep enough I'd probably find the same functions written in several
versions of basic as well.

All this is a matter of personal choice and localising for multiple customs
but isn't that a big part of what LO is all about?

Cheers all,

Bruce Carlson

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, 1 December 2011 12:29 AM
> o: users@global.libreoffice.org
> Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] French/English date

> Hi :)
> Tuesday 29 November 2011 feels very wrong to me.  There needs to be a 
> th in
super-script just after the 29.  I agree about removing superfluous
punctuation though. Regards from Tom :)

> --- On Wed, 30/11/11, Brian Barker <b.m.barker@btinternet.com> wrote:

> From: Brian Barker <b.m.barker@btinternet.com>
> Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] French/English date
> To: users@global.libreoffice.org
> Date: Wednesday, 30 November, 2011, 7:51

At 23:38 29/11/2011 +1100, Bruce Carlson wrote:
> It has bothered me for years but the correct long date format in 
> English or at least English English is :- eg: Tuesday the 29th. of 
> November, 2011. Note the correct use of articles, ordinals, commas and 
> full stops... (the things Americans call periods.) No word processor 
> or database application I have ever seen can format long dates 
> correctly in English or any other language that I'm aware of and that 
> is why I've written my own code and macros to format dates the way I 
> was taught at school and while that was many many many years ago 
> evolution is no excuse for inaccuracy. To format dates incorrectly 
> seems to me to be an expedience, not an attempt at accuracy. Whilst we 
> have for many years had to endure commercial applications written in 
> one particular cultural style or another I believe open source is a 
> very good opportunity to get localisations (notice the use of "s" and 
> not zed) correct and if people from various cultures can contribute to 
> this we
 will all be winners.

Sorry, but you were mis-taught at school.  What you write and what you see
in written language does not always correspond exactly to what you say.
Yes: the way you say that date in British English may well be "tuesday the
twenty-ninth of november twenty eleven", but that doesn't mean that you have
to express all of those sounds in writing.  Take, for example, your "2011".
If that were an account number, you would probably read and speak it as "two
oh one one" (or possibly "two zero one one") or "two oh double one"; if it
were a plain number, you would say "two thousand and eleven" (USians would
say "two thousand eleven"); as it is a date, you say "twenty eleven". (Well,
I hope you do.)  You don't read "29th" as "two nine tee aitch" or even as
"twenty-nine tee aitch", but as "twenty-ninth".  Your telephone number may
end "one oh double six", but the battle of Hastings was in "ten
sixty-six": they are spoken differently but written the same.  James Bond
wouldn't recognise "zero zero seven".

The normal way of writing your date in British English is "Tuesday 29
November 2011", and you read this as "tuesday the twenty-ninth of november
twenty eleven".  But you are very welcome to format your dates exactly as
you wish, of course - until you get a job where you are required to follow
the accepted system.

Oh, and you don't put a full stop after "29th" in any case: in British
English usage there is no full stop if the end of the original is included
in the abbreviation.  "Prof." has a full stop, but "Mr" and "Dr" do not;
"Rev." has one but "Revd" does not.  Your primary school may well have got
that wrong too.

There are plenty of authorities for all this, but you need to trust proper
style guides, not primary school textbooks.  And there's a reason why you
cannot find any product which follows your teachers' advice!

Brian Barker


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