* Error message could be improved - Specified time is not representable
@ 2011-05-24 7:06 Julian Bean
2011-05-24 8:16 ` Giovanni Ridolfi
0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: Julian Bean @ 2011-05-24 7:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: emacs-orgmode
Hi all,
On upgrading to emacs 23.3 (from emacs 23.1) my daily/weekly agenda became unusable, giving the error message "Specified time is not representable".
After a bit of poking around in the backtrace I tracked this down to an erroneous SCHEDULED date of 1st January 1904 buried inside a task. (This date was created by a bug in a script I was using to import TODOs from another system).
Evidently, for some reason, calling (encode-time 0 0 0 1 1 1904) on 23.3 causes the error above, whereas on 23.1 it's silently ignored?
I think the best thing for org-mode is to catch this error and report it to the user in a more understandable way so they can locate and fix the buggy timestamp - at least, include the full text of the timestamp so they can easily grep for it?
Jules
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Re: Error message could be improved - Specified time is not representable
2011-05-24 7:06 Error message could be improved - Specified time is not representable Julian Bean
@ 2011-05-24 8:16 ` Giovanni Ridolfi
2011-05-24 8:31 ` Julian Bean
0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: Giovanni Ridolfi @ 2011-05-24 8:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Julian Bean; +Cc: emacs-orgmode
Julian Bean <jules@jellybean.co.uk> writes:
Hi Jules,
>
> On upgrading to emacs 23.3 (from emacs 23.1) my daily/weekly agenda
> became unusable, giving the error message "Specified time is not
> representable".
>
> [...] I tracked this down to an erroneous SCHEDULED date of 1st
> January 1904 buried inside a task. [...]
>
> Evidently, for some reason, calling (encode-time 0 0 0 1 1 1904) on
> 23.3 causes the error above,
" This is probably related to the same problem as discussed in this
thread:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/39206
on the limitations of unix time (whether on Unix or not...)."
> whereas on 23.1 it's silently ignored?
Since it is an Emacs problem I think you should ask Emacs's
developers:
emacs-devel@gnu.org
or file a bug report:
M-x report-emacs-bug or write to
bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
cheers,
Giovanni
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Re: Error message could be improved - Specified time is not representable
2011-05-24 8:16 ` Giovanni Ridolfi
@ 2011-05-24 8:31 ` Julian Bean
0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Julian Bean @ 2011-05-24 8:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Giovanni Ridolfi; +Cc: emacs-orgmode
On 24 May 2011, at 09:16, Giovanni Ridolfi wrote:
> Julian Bean <jules@jellybean.co.uk> writes:
>
>>
>> [...] I tracked this down to an erroneous SCHEDULED date of 1st
>> January 1904 buried inside a task. [...]
>>
>> Evidently, for some reason, calling (encode-time 0 0 0 1 1 1904) on
>> 23.3 causes the error above,
>
> " This is probably related to the same problem as discussed in this
> thread:
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/39206
>
> on the limitations of unix time (whether on Unix or not...)."
Thanks, I missed that. You're right, that describes another manifestation of the same issue.
>
>> whereas on 23.1 it's silently ignored?
>
> Since it is an Emacs problem I think you should ask Emacs's
> developers:
> emacs-devel@gnu.org
>
> or file a bug report:
> M-x report-emacs-bug or write to
> bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
I disagree. It's not a clear emacs bug - the docstring for encode-time says very clearly "Years before 1970 are not guaranteed to work. On some systems, year values as low as 1901 do work.". encode-time is working as documented and I certainly don't understand emacs' date-time internals well enough to suggest a better way.
The *org-mode* bug is, simply, the error message (hence my message title). If this exception does occur, it would be nice if org-mode would catch it, and provide better information to the user about which timestamp he needs to fix.
Jules
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
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2011-05-24 7:06 Error message could be improved - Specified time is not representable Julian Bean
2011-05-24 8:16 ` Giovanni Ridolfi
2011-05-24 8:31 ` Julian Bean
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