Workeffort Calendar Progress

[Adrian Crum]

David E Jones wrote:
> Please step outside of yourself a little bit and realize that your
> experiences are not the same as the whole world and that perhaps you're
> not in a position to speak for the whole world.

lol - That's the position *you've* taken, not me. Daniel and I have expressed a different view than
yours, and you're trying to argue that yours is the "best" one. I'm trying to make a point that we
have two different requirements, therefore OFBiz should attempt to accomodate both requirements.
You're saying that the OFBiz users who have different requirements than yours don't matter, or that
they aren't well traveled, or they are confused and don't know what's best for them.

 > Also, which systems or
> even types of systems have you used?
> OFBiz is (or aspires to be!) a global friendly corporate scale ERP
> system.

{snip]

> wrong about the format? What about the poor users (like me!) who travel
> and use web sites around the world and always have to guess about the
> date format, sometimes getting it wrong and would really just like to
> have thing
> s be consistent and in a format that is sortable and makes sense so I
> can think of time increments largest to smallest?

Let's apply the same argument to currency. Why should we support anything other than US dollars? It
shouldn't take long for users accustomed to other currency to adapt, right? Why does OFBiz format
currency according to locale? Aren't those currency formatting differences "funny local customs" too?

I think you're making this a bigger issue than it needs to be. All of the date/time formatting has
to be run through some kind of conversion method anyway, so why not add to that method a simple if
statement that checks a property in general.properties? If the server is set up to use yyyy-mm-dd
formatting, then use it. Otherwise, format the date/time according to the user's locale. It doesn't
require any additional programming effort. Problem solved. Everybody's happy.

> Of course, we should really give this some time and let others express
> their opinions.

I agree. We've both made our points. I'm done.

-Adrian

[David E Jones]

Adrian Crum wrote:

> David E Jones wrote:
>> Please step outside of yourself a little bit and realize that your
>> experiences are not the same as the whole world and that perhaps
>> you're not in a position to speak for the whole world.
>
> lol - That's the position *you've* taken, not me. Daniel and I have
> expressed a different view than yours, and you're trying to argue that
> yours is the "best" one. I'm trying to make a point that we have two
> different requirements, therefore OFBiz should attempt to accomodate
> both requirements. You're saying that the OFBiz users who have different
> requirements than yours don't matter, or that they aren't well traveled,
> or they are confused and don't know what's best for them.

I may just be writing this because I'm damn sick (no solid food for 6 days now) and in a bad mood... but I DARE you to back up the words your speaking on my behalf with text from what I actually wrote, especially the "You're saying that the OFBiz users who have different requirements than yours don't matter". If I mis-wrote that badly, I should just give up now.

>  > Also, which systems or
>> even types of systems have you used?
>> OFBiz is (or aspires to be!) a global friendly corporate scale ERP
>> system.
>
> {snip]
>
>> wrong about the format? What about the poor users (like me!) who
>> travel and use web sites around the world and always have to guess
>> about the date format, sometimes getting it wrong and would really
>> just like to have thing
>> s be consistent and in a format that is sortable and makes sense so I
>> can think of time increments largest to smallest?
>
> Let's apply the same argument to currency. Why should we support
> anything other than US dollars? It shouldn't take long for users
> accustomed to other currency to adapt, right? Why does OFBiz format
> currency according to locale? Aren't those currency formatting
> differences "funny local customs" too?

False analogy.

> I think you're making this a bigger issue than it needs to be. All of
> the date/time formatting has to be run through some kind of conversion
> method anyway, so why not add to that method a simple if statement that
> checks a property in general.properties? If the server is set up to use
> yyyy-mm-dd formatting, then use it. Otherwise, format the date/time
> according to the user's locale. It doesn't require any additional
> programming effort. Problem solved. Everybody's happy.

This seems strangely familiar...

-David

[Jacques Le Roux]

This is really a confusing theme.

On one hand, as an "informaticien" (it's the word for software engineer here in France)  I would love to see everybody in this world
using an unique sortable date format. I like to see order in things and yes I'm very puzzled too with all these date formats.

On the other hand it's obvious that we are not missionaries and that people do like using what they have learnt at school or at
work. In every days life people use date formats to sign check, etc. How can we expect them to get rid of their common locale habits
using a software ? For them it's only a tool, like a pencil or such...

So I agree with Adrian last paragraph below (I'm not sure of what David means by "This seems strangely familiar...")

Jacques

De : "David E Jones" <[hidden email]>

>
>
> Adrian Crum wrote:
> > David E Jones wrote:
> >> Please step outside of yourself a little bit and realize that your
> >> experiences are not the same as the whole world and that perhaps
> >> you're not in a position to speak for the whole world.
> >
> > lol - That's the position *you've* taken, not me. Daniel and I have
> > expressed a different view than yours, and you're trying to argue that
> > yours is the "best" one. I'm trying to make a point that we have two
> > different requirements, therefore OFBiz should attempt to accomodate
> > both requirements. You're saying that the OFBiz users who have different
> > requirements than yours don't matter, or that they aren't well traveled,
> > or they are confused and don't know what's best for them.
>
> I may just be writing this because I'm damn sick (no solid food for 6 days now) and in a bad mood... but I DARE you to back up the

words your speaking on my behalf with text from what I actually wrote, especially the "You're saying that the OFBiz users who have
different requirements than yours don't matter". If I mis-wrote that badly, I should just give up now.

>
> >  > Also, which systems or
> >> even types of systems have you used?
> >> OFBiz is (or aspires to be!) a global friendly corporate scale ERP
> >> system.
> >
> > {snip]
> >
> >> wrong about the format? What about the poor users (like me!) who
> >> travel and use web sites around the world and always have to guess
> >> about the date format, sometimes getting it wrong and would really
> >> just like to have thing
> >> s be consistent and in a format that is sortable and makes sense so I
> >> can think of time increments largest to smallest?
> >
> > Let's apply the same argument to currency. Why should we support
> > anything other than US dollars? It shouldn't take long for users
> > accustomed to other currency to adapt, right? Why does OFBiz format
> > currency according to locale? Aren't those currency formatting
> > differences "funny local customs" too?
>
> False analogy.
>
> > I think you're making this a bigger issue than it needs to be. All of
> > the date/time formatting has to be run through some kind of conversion
> > method anyway, so why not add to that method a simple if statement that
> > checks a property in general.properties? If the server is set up to use
> > yyyy-mm-dd formatting, then use it. Otherwise, format the date/time
> > according to the user's locale. It doesn't require any additional
> > programming effort. Problem solved. Everybody's happy.
>
> This seems strangely familiar...
>
> -David
>

[Daniel Martínez-4]

David,

While I'd love to see all people in the world using this sortable date
format, GMT time and speaking spanish :P, I have to face reality in form
of the users' locale.

David E Jones escribió:

>
> Adrian,
>
> Please step outside of yourself a little bit and realize that your
> experiences are not the same as the whole world and that perhaps
> you're not in a position to speak for the whole world. Also, which
> systems or even types of systems have you used?
> OFBiz is (or aspires to be!) a global friendly corporate scale ERP
> system. In my view this makes the two things we've been discussing
> contradictory:
>
> 1. properly support multiple time zones (important for global ERP
> systems, doesn't matter for USA or Europe only desktop small business
> apps)

I also agree with you that lack of timezone support is a major problem
which can break havoc in form of database consistency and scheduling
problems.
>
> 2. use funny local customs for date format (bad for global ERP
> systems, good for USA or Europe only desktop small business apps)
>
> Some places in the world don't have a consistent standard. In the USA
> my experience has been there are multiple standards, though yes the
> defacto one is month/day/year - even though ordering things that way
> makes NO sense whatsoever.
You can take Excell. While not a global-focused ERP, excell files are
exchanged everyday through mail between different locales. Date formats
are viewed according to the user locale (which can also be configured)
and everybody is happy. Why can't ofbiz support this?
>
> Anyway, how long does it takes for a user to get the idea of a
> descending date/time format? A few minutes maybe?
How much a discussion like this will take with a manager? How many more
complaints (translated to effort in meetings) will the system suffer
from this issue?
> How annoying is it to have different entry formats in different places
> (it will be a fair bit of work to make them all consistently different
> in OFBiz now...)? Even if they are all consistent, how annoying is it
> to produce different documentation and screen shots for different
> places around the world, even if nothing is different other than this?
Well, the language will be different also (in non-english countries), so
the screenshots will have to be changed anyway.
> How confusing is it for "George" in a support call center in India to
> take calls from all over the world and have to figure out what the
> user is seeing on the other end and why they're getting a date format
> error or worse some other obscure error or a non-error but unexpected
> result when the user guesses wrong about the format? What about the
> poor users (like me!) who travel and use web sites around the world
> and always have to guess about the date format, sometimes getting it
> wrong and would really just like to have thing
It should not be a problem is George has a tool to select the correct
user's locale (as ofbiz has).

How many poor users (like me) have to suffer global ecommerce sites
(like amazon) not respecting my locale (not only dates in mm/dd/yyyy
format but also lack of support for accents, unicode, etc ...)?
>
> Of course, we should really give this some time and let others express
> their opinions. I also realize I've only experienced a small corner of
> the world, but that is the main reason I have for keeping this
> consistent and as standard as possible for the ERP world.
--
Daniel