Re: A proposed enhancement in entering timestamps (was: A small fix in `org-read-date-analyze')

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2016-03-18, at 17:51, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:

> I'm now reading org-read-date-analyze to be able to enable US military
> format for hours (e.g., 2100 instead of 21:00).  This is potentially
> very useful (at least for me), since I'll be able to enter the hour with
> one hand (colon is on shift-semicolon on my keyboard).  Another idea
> would be to enable 21.00 (this notation is sometimes used in Poland).
> Would there be demand for such a feature?

Hi all,

and thanks Eric and Sam for positive feedback.

It seems that it is harder than I thought.  `org-read-date-analyze'
relies on `parse-time-string'.  It is relatively easy to make the latter
function accept both 21.00 and 2100, but the way `org-read-date-analyze'
uses `parse-time-string' makes things a bit difficult.  So, it will take
me a couple of days, I guess.

One thing that would tremendously help is tests.  I think these
functions are rather fragile, in the sense that it's very easy to break
something (`parse-time-string' is a total mess, for example - it is
"clever", yes, but proving that it actually works seems next to
impossible), so without an extensive test suite I wouldn't touch these
functions.  Does anyone have - or can make - a set of valid (in
`org-read-date' sense) strings to make tests first and then modify these
functions?  (I could make it myself, but I might forget about some cases -
and there are a lot of them!  And it's even nontrivial to test the
coverage, since large part of the `parse-time-string' /logic/ is hidden
in the /variable/ `parse-time-rules', which btw has a 1-line
docstring...)

> Best,

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University