emacs-orgmode@gnu.org archives
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
* 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

end of thread, other threads:[~2011-05-24  8:32 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 3+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
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

Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).