Re: No dot in datepicker dialog

[Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net>]

Hi Bastien,
* Bastien <bzg@altern.org> [04. Apr. 2013]:
> Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:
>> A couple of weeks ago[1] the datepicking dialog got modified such
>> that a dot "." jumps to the current day. Handy for most Org-mode
>> users I guess.
> 
> "." is also the character used in M-x calendar RET to jump to today's
> date.
>> However, this interferes with another feature I used quite often: I
>> was able to enter "31.12." to quickly select 31st of December, for
>> example.
>>
>> Please notice that (at least) in German speaking countries, it is
>> common to use "31.12." and not "12/31" or similar.
>>
>> So in current Org-mode (git), I can not enter the character "."
>> because it does not end up with a dot in the bottom line.

I think here two different usages collide:

1) user of org-mode controls the date picker via keystrokes
2) enter dates (and times) via cut/paste from other sources
   (which were not created with the org-mode date picker in mind)
   and let the date picker parse them

I for instance heavily rely on the second usage scenario.

While I see that the usage of `.' for jump-to-today is
long-standing tradition in Emacs calendar (first usage scenario),
it's also a very common character to separate date fields in many
countries (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country) (important
for second usage scenario).

Therefore if we give `.' a special meaning in the date picker it
is no longer possible to paste dates e.g. from emails if these
happen to use `.' as date field separator.


>> Is there a way to customize this behavior?
> 
> You can insert a dot with C-q . in the calendar.

This won't work with pasted text snippets containing dates.

> You can also customize the local map:
> 
> ;; Unbind "." in Org's calendar:
> (define-key org-read-date-minibuffer-local-map (kbd ".") nil)
> 
> ;; Bind "@" to `calendar-goto-today':
> (define-key org-read-date-minibuffer-local-map
>             (kbd "@")
>             (lambda () (interactive) (org-eval-in-calendar '(calendar-goto-today))))

Using a character which usually is not used in sentences which
refer to dates and times would help both usage scenarios.  While
I can't find an example ATM, I remember to have seen combined
date-time representations like "2013-03-04@12:30".  

Characters typically not used in date/time representations
are (to my little knowledge):

`§', `$', `%', `&', `=', `#', `\', `_', `´', ``'

these are normally not used in normal sentences which contain
date/time information (as opposed to e.g. `,', `:', `;') and most
of them are typically present on keyboards (perhaps not the `§'
which is part of German keyboards, which says a lot about German
culture I guess).  These characters are also not mentioned with
special meaning in the org manual on this topic ((org)Top > Dates
and Times > Creating timestamps > The date/time prompt).

Wouldn't it be better to have one of these as a *default* setting
for calendar-goto-today?


Or: would it help to restrict the special meaning of `.' as a
reference for `today' only for the first character of the date
picker input?  This would correspond with the usage advise
"Generally, the information should start at the beginning of the
string" in the org-mode manual and at the same time with the
long-standing meaning of `.' for `today' for Emacs calendar
users while still allowing to paste date/time information from
sources outside the Emacs/org-mode universe.



Sorry for my lousy command of the English language and thanks for
considering this anyway, Gregor