Re: [bug?, ox-odt] Format DATE

[Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us>]

Christian Moe <mail@christianmoe.com> writes:

>>> Going by the documentation of org-odt-use-date-fields, the data styles
>>> "OrgDate1" and "OrgDate2" are supposed to be mapped from
>>> org-time-stamp-custom-formats, rather than
>>> org-export-date-timestamp-format. 
>>
>> Yeah, I saw that, but the description of
>> `org-time-stamp-custom-formats' looks a bit opaque.  I wondered if it
>> would affect the recognition of timestamps in buffer (since the
>> variable is not an org-export-· variable).  If it's truly *only*
>> affecting exports it should be renamed.
>
> No, judging by the manual entry, it was intended for customizing the
> appearance of timestamps in the buffer, which it does, see below. To
> accommodate people who think ISO time format is just too darned
> /sensible/...

O-o-okay.

> But it has the nice (and little-mentioned) side effect that you can use
> it to change the appearance of timestamps in exports, where
> non-geeky-looking everyday-language dates are often comme il faut. Works
> nicely in HTML, for instance, except that you still get geeky-looking
> brackets around the dates (may need a filter to remove those).

While I really want this functionality, I think that this way of using
it is a bug.  It should depend on a separate org-export-· variable. ..

> It's nice, for instance, if you have a document with a lot of dates in a
> European format and need to switch to an American format; you can do it
> by changing a setting.

Wait, so does this variable change how dates are interpreted or not?
I.e. can I "choose" whether <2010-01-10> is January 10th or October
first?  Or is an Org timestamp always in sensible ISO?

> And the ODT exporter builds on this to give date fields that can be
> further changed in LibreOffice.

Right.

>>> So this will apply to the output from the DATE keyword too.
>>>
>>> To make this happen, org-display-custom-times must be non-nil. 
>>> This affects not only the date in the heading from the DATE keyword,
>>> but also all other timestamps in the document.
>>>
>>> Having org-display-custom-times turned on all the time also puts
>>> overlays on the timestamps in your buffer, but if this annoys you you
>>> can bind it to be set during export only.
>>
>> OK.  I don't know this functionality.  It sounds less bad that what I
>> feared, but still the org-export-· variables should probably be
>> sufficient.
>>
>> Is `org-time-stamp-custom-formats' the recommend way of formatting
>> regular time stamps for export?
>
> I don't know about "recommended". It doesn't seem to be documented for
> export at all. And as for ODT, the code comments say the feature
> translating from custom time stamp formats to ODT date styles is
> "experimental". Seems to work OK, though.

I like the possibility, but I think export and buffer display should be
separated.

>>> But doing it this way still ignores
>>> org-export-date-timestamp-format, and any solution based on copying that
>>> variable into org-time-stamp-custom-formats makes unsafe assumptions about
>>> user preferences.
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>> It seems to me that the export of the DATE keyword ought to honor a
>>> non-nil org-export-date-timestamp-format, whether or not the user is
>>> applying custom formatting to other timestamps. 
>>> But that would take some
>>> changes to several parts of ox-odt.el, I think.
>>
>> Yeah.  It's can be made even more complicated than that, since the
>> *document language* of the output also affects how dates are
>> formatted. . .
>
> In Org, or in LibreOffice once you set the language there? 

In LO some of the date formatting is a function of the document
language.  The document language (or maybe region language, I don't
really know...) is seen at the bottom.

Date has a gray background indicating it's special...  With sufficient
time and creativity you can get to a menu for formatting the date.  Some
of these formats (especially the "human-friendly" ones) will depend on
the language.

On the other hand, "Table of Contents" seems completely independent of
the document language. . .

> If the #+LANGUAGE keyword is supposed to affect date formatting in Org
> output, I must be missing a trick.

I think #+DATE might not be truly affected by #+LANGUAGE, after all, but
rather be affected of different system languages on my two home-PC and
work-PC (I'm unable to get this computer—which has English as a system
language—to export dates in other languages via
org-export-date-timestamp-format).  

This is probably a separate bug.

>> So a two step method would be: (0) make sure that the document
>> language is set correctly (similar to how the right babel language is
>> selected in LaTeX), and (1) be able to change the format of the date.
>>
>> Or we could lose the date-stamp-feature and insert the date as
>> plaintext.  This is probably simpler, but I don't know if this is the
>> "correct" way.

>>> Rasmus, will you be pursuing this?
>> If you are thinking about fixing this, I won't stop you!  I dread
>> ·xml.  This weekend sort of disappeared in (other kinds of) wasted
>> efforts, so I haven't progressed on this.
> Not anytime soon, I'm afraid; pressed for time.

That's fine.  I will try to look into this; hopefully soon.

—Rasmus

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