vbman...

[kujanomiko]

Would it be possible to get a link-wrapper thing going? When people post long URLs, as in to most ODP subcats, it looks horrible in 800x600, stretches across the screen and of course, gets the horizontal scroll bar going. Its really aggrivating to read a thread that way. <img src="/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Edit: And can we change the date format? To like d/m/y instead of y/m/d? <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" alt="" />

[dstanovic]

Not to put these good people through any more work than they already have but I second that motion <img src="/images/icons/shocked.gif" alt="" />

<<Edit: And can we change the date format? To like d/m/y instead of y/m/d>>

Dave

[totalxsive]

I prefer yyyy-mm-dd - that's the internationally agreed format, as g1smd (giz) will tell you <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />.

[sabre23t]

Me too prefer yyyy-mm-dd. If you want it d/m/y (or m/d/y), I prefer it with the month in 3 letter code, dd/mmm/yy (or mmm/dd/yy). Then, I'm sure which is the month. ;-)

[dstanovic]

Hmmm....... two votes for and two votes against .... I vote again now it's three against two <img src="/images/icons/shocked.gif" alt="" />

[giz]

In the past, 03/02/2001 has meant either March 2nd in the US, or 3rd February in Europe. In an online situation there is too much room for confusion. The International Standard is to write 2001-02-03 so that it cannot be confused with either one [ISO 8601], reflected in National Standards such as [ US: ANSI X3.30-1985(R1991), NIST FIPS 4-1 and 4-2 = CA: CSA Z234.5:1989 = EU: EN 28601:1991 = UK: BS EN 28601:1992 = PL: PN-90/N-01204 = JA: JIS X 0301-1992 = TH: TIS 1111-2535 = CN: GB/T 7408-94 = TW: CNS 7648 = KR: KS A 5401-1972, KS C 5610-1992 = IN: IS 7900:1976 = AU: AS 3802:1997 = ZA: ARP 010:1989 ] and now in the Internet Standard [RFC 3339].

Resource Zone uses YY/MM/DD which retains the US style MM/DD ordering, whilst moving the Year to the front, as per the International style. I personally wish RZ used a 4-digit year for clarity. The Y-M-D format makes for logical Left-to-Right reading; meaning when you are looking at posting dates the Day number and the Hour are in adjacent columns. Usage of the month in words or as an abbreviation would mean extra work as the month would have to be translated in each foreign language board here. Additionally, since RZ is driven by SQL, this date format represents the minimum translation required, as SQL often uses the ISO 8601 based YYYY-MM-DD date format internally.

Is RZ likely to give users the option for the 24-hour format time? That's also in the International Standard. I haven't ever used AM and PM before, and I find it confusing that 11 am is followed by 12 pm then 1 pm.



The thread stretch problem is easily solved if posters take the time to edit their post after submitting it. When you edit your post you will see stuff like: [ url=resource-zone.com/ ] http: //resource-zone.com/ [ /url ] but without any spaces in it.

If you modify this to say something like [ url = resource-zone.com/ ] Resource Zone [ /url ] making sure there are no spaces in the source code, then you will change a link from this style: http://resource-zone.com/ to this Resource Zone . In the latter case it does not matter how long the actual URL really is as it is hidden behind the clickable word.

[windharp]

Only as a comment: I am working with the german ODP-Test interface in here, and the date-stamp in each message reads dd-mm-yy :-)

[sabre23t]

Vbman, can I trouble you for two improvements?[list] [*]Editor Title - should be static, old post made when I was Editor should remain so, even after they give me a "raise" to Editall level. [*]Editor/Thread Rating - there should be a way for me to change my rating for an Editor/Thread, one that is 3-star today may be 5-star tomorrow, and vice-versa.[/list:u]

[Ron]

I agree that date formats can cause confusion particularly if one already has to do the mental conversion back and forth between many different numeric date formats on other national sites.

Rather than impose an international standard on the appearance of dates, would it not be better to adopt the approach used in Java based applications which is to set the default date (as well as currency and other) formats to the locale of the site visitor?

If this I18N / L10N approach is thought to be overkill then perhaps the preferred date format could be added to the list of configurable options on the "My Home" page.

I am not familiar with the source code for this particular forum system so I don't know if this would be an easy alteration to make.

Just a thought ...

[giz]

One of the problems with user configurable date and time formats, is that it adds a lot of code, and gives extra work to the system to reformat every date every time it is served to a user. However, if the user cuts and pastes any information either back into the system or to an email, then the format becomes 'fixed' at that point; it can no longer be manipulated; and may be misunderstood if the data traverses the Atlantic. One of the reasons for having an International Standard is so that we all learn one simple method, then stick to it. Sites like http://www.ntk.net/ and http://www.tbtf.com/ and http://www.seoconsultants.com/press/ have already done this, and this makes the data clear to everyone. However, this does work best when the year is stated using all four digits. [ Search ]. The W3C have had a note at: http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime for several years about usage of ISO 8601 formats for Date and Time. Only recently has this evolved into the published RFC 3339 standard [ http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3339.html ] .

[Ron]

I take your point regarding the cutting and pasting of dates in email messages but, surely, the same problem is likely to apply to dates which originate outside of the context of this forum as well.

In terms of I18N / L10N issues, I personally dislike the "one size fits all" approach to internationalisation issues and prefer to work to W3C guidelines and recommendations and adapt, wherever possible, to the requirements of the locale.

I do not find the argument that it would take "a lot of code" to be a convincing one, but it of course depends on what you would consider to be a lot of code.

A simple library function in PHP attached to an array or lookup table would do the trick. The date probably has to be converted from an internal time format in any event. I do not imagine that the designers of the forum software imposed their view of a standard in their source code.

Every effort should be made to making the web an international resource. There are not that many sites which take account of the browser language preferences at the moment. Google is a notable exception.

The software used in this forum is also set up to recognise when the language settings are changed in the user's browser and to immediately present its pages in the preferred language once the setting has been changed. (Error: See correction in the following message)

Try this for yourself and you will see what I mean.

For this reason, I cannot see why this same logic cannot be applied to making the ODP forum more open to regional norms in terms of date formats.

This actually opens up a much wider area of debate and I wonder whether it would not be a good idea to devote a separate forum to an exploration of I18N / L10N issues as a whole and outside of the limited context of date formats.

There needs to be much greater discussion on the use of HTML language attributes within metatags, for example.

Pages which contain blocks of content in more than one language need to incorporate standard language attribute tags in more than one language. This has always been a part of the basic HTML specification and yet these issues are often ignored.

A case in point is the getmetatags() function in PHP. As it stands now, it will only return a single value for each meta tag.

If your page has, for example, a description metatag in French and another in English then only one language version will be returned by the PHP function. There are similar oversights in other scripting languages and HTML parsers.

These issues must have an affect on the quality of the site indexing and deserve to be explored in detail.

[Ron]

A correction to my previous message:

I have just tested the language option and find that it is actually only supported on the "My Home" page and that the forum currently ignores the contents of the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE variable.

As it would be quite easy to automatically set this preference based on the browser's preferred language/s it might be a good idea for such a feature be added to the ODP home page.

This would make it possible for the ODP site to be presented in the visitor's preferred language from the outset.

The existing option ( to change the language used within the ODP Forum ) could be retained as it is although it might be redundant in most cases if the language selection was made automatic. Just a thought ...

I can post the PHP source code for checking the preferred language online if it could be of any help.

The ODP forum currently supports date formats which allow the time to be shown according to the timezone of the visitor so it would not impose an additional load on the system to extend this to the display of the date in a user specified format.

Once the default language has been determined than it could be simply stored in a cookie so that the checking of the contents of the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE variable would only take place if the language setting in the cookie did not already exist.

This is the method used on the Google site and so you will have to delete your existing Google cookie for the site to take account of any changes in your language settings.

I have just tested this on the Google site again and now can view the Google home page in Scots Gaelic !

Sadly, the option for Welsh language support (which is newly available in Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 7 PR1 ) doesn't work with Netscape 6 and causes the browser to freeze before the Google homepage is fully displayed.

[wrathchild]

For the love of Pete can the date format be changed to dd-mmm-yy ? I am going bonkers mentally adjusting the dates here from American to European.

Please?

[totalxsive]

They are already in dd/mm/yy...

By the way of 'European', do you mean 'International'? AFAIK the US and Canada are the only countries who use mm/dd/yy.

[wrathchild]

International, then.

05-MAR-03 is what I'm after. 05/03/03 looks like May 3rd to me, and it's making my brain hurt.