[FeatureRequest] Use ISO 8601 format by default

Saarsk commented 7 months ago

I think it would be wise to use the international standardized date format, ISO 8601. Droid-ify currently uses the traditional US date format.

Format	Notation
Traditional US date format	MM/DD/YYYY
International standard (ISO 8601)	YYYY-MM-DD

The problem with the US date format:

Differs from the formats used in nearly all other countries.
Is formally being deprecated in the US.
Non-chronological notation.
Possibility for mistakes or bugs in case of non-American contributers not being aware of the non-standard notation (or even American contributors as ISO 8601 is common in development).
Increases code-complexity for resolving and computing dates.

The international standard, ISO 8601, solves these issues.

My suggestion is to change the default to the standardized format and optionally offer the US format for those who want it (although there would be a code-related penalty, so going ISO 8601-only would have its undeniable benefits).

xeals commented 6 months ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this only affects Droid-ify when using its "English" language setting, which is specifically "English (US)". When using the "system" language setting where the system language is another variant of English, dates are formatted according to that locale.

Saarsk commented 6 months ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this only affects Droid-ify when using its "English" language setting, which is specifically "English (US)". When using the "system" language setting where the system language is another variant of English, dates are formatted according to that locale.

For context, my language setting is set to "System" (and my system language is in English). :slightly_smiling_face: As a test, I changed to Norwegian and the date format also changed as a result (but not to ISO 8601).

Though, I don't have any interest in having the app in Norwegian (it's very common for people to prefer English UI here, despite it being our second language). I don't think nesting date format into language settings is the best practice. :)

I didn't want to outright call for exclusively using ISO 8601 as I don't know what American users, contributors and the project owners feel about it. Having said that, there are compelling arguments to be made for its adoption as default behaviour (should the idea of completely removing other date formats be unfavorable). A nice thing about ISO 8601 for Americans, though, is that the order of month and day is the same that they're used to (while at the same time being chronological).

Droid-ify / client

[FeatureRequest] Use ISO 8601 format by default #643