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From: Ihor Radchenko <[email protected]>
To: Zoey Hewll <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FR] org-read-date-style
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 16:00:09 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87a59mgu7q.fsf@localhost> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>

Zoey Hewll <[email protected]> writes:

> * Motivation
> The prevailing date format where I live is D/M/Y, often abbreviated to 
> D/M. While I prefer Y-M-D as a persistent storage format, I naturally 
> default to D/M and prefer it for data entry. Especially when entering 
> recent dates (with =org-read-date-prefer-future= set to nil), which 
> usually do not require the year component and therefore the unambiguous 
> ISO 8601 format (Y-M-D) is slower to input in full, and does not match 
> the locally conventional order (D/M) when abbreviated (M-D).
>
> * Proposal
> The =org-read-date= function understands slash-separated dates in the 
> "american" format (M/D/Y and M/D). This code could be modified so that 
> the parsing of slash-separated dates depends on user preference, by 
> introducing a configuration variable like =calendar-date-style=, which 
> I'm tentatively naming =org-read-date-style=. Like 
> =calendar-date-style=, this would change the parsing of slash-separated 
> dates by =org-read-date=, but it would not change the order of arguments 
> passed to date-processing functions.
>
> It would support at least =american= (M/D and M/D/Y) and =european= (D/M 
> and D/M/Y) options.

I do not mind such an addition.

> * Alternatives and Extensions
> - =org-read-date= could simply read the value of =calendar-date-style= 
> rather than introducing a new configuration item. I propose a new item 
> because of the well-documented pitfalls of =calendar-date-style=.

Maybe we can default `org-read-date-style' to the value of `calendar-date-style'.

> - There could be an option to entirely forbid dates in slash-separated 
> formats, if the user wishes to avoid the possibility of this kind of 
> misinterpretation. I have not proposed this as I have no use for it.

This sounds excessive. If user does not want to use /, just do not type it.

> ... side-note: I 
> have not attached a patch as I am yet to complete the copyright 
> assignment, but I thought the feature was worthwhile to request regardless.)

If you need any help with the copyright assignment process, please let me know.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode maintainer,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>


  reply	other threads:[~2025-03-15 16:03 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-02-17 11:08 [FR] org-read-date-style Zoey Hewll
2025-03-15 16:00 ` Ihor Radchenko [this message]
2025-04-29 17:22   ` Ihor Radchenko
2025-05-13 14:59     ` Zoey Hewll
2025-07-13 14:32       ` Ihor Radchenko

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