rowan.collins wrote:

Just a comment that "$wgUseDates" doesn't seem like a very good variable name to
me - it makes me want to ask "use them for what"? What you seem to be asking for
is more along the lines of a "$wgUseDatePreferences", as in a feature to let
users specify how they want dates in the interface to appear (even if this
doesn't include automagically munging dates in the text); am I right?

avarab wrote:

You're right on both accounts, that is what I want to do and
$wgUseDatePreferences is a much saner variable name.

avarab wrote:

A (rough) proposal.

A (rough) proposal.

A rough mockup of a proposal to solve this:

• date formats are read from $wgDateFormatsXx, this array should contain no

more than 100 items (10 is probably enough, please comment) where number 0 is
an indication of the default an 100 is the ISO 8601 formatted date. (perhaps it

would be better to not have it a number but iso => ...)

• The option is then set in the preferences which automatically display the

"Date format" option of the $wgDateFormatsXx array is not empty, however if the

language in question wishes to not use this at all they'll have to set
$wgDateFormatsXx = array(); because otherwise it'll be read from the parent
(usually Language.php)

Note that since the date format is set by numbers we could get drastic changes
between languages where e.g. item 3 in the array can mean something different
in de. and on en. and fo., I don't have a definite way solve this in a smart
manner we can'tguarentee that formats will be at all alike between languages
however this could be solved by using an associative array where some defaults
will always be the same:

$foo = array(

default => something default here...
long => "the standard long format for this language" (like en:"January 23,

2005" or is:"23. janúar 2005")

abbrev => "the abbrivated format" (en:"Jan 23, 2005", "23. jan. 2005")
numeric => "the standard numeric format: (en: 23.01.2005, is: 23/01/2005)
iso => "the iso 8601 format" (all: 2005-01-23)

);

then of course each language could add something new using a key which is not
one of the reserved values.

Attached:

avarab wrote:

Fixed in HEAD (although the final implementation was different than the one
described here.)