On 8/4/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
That's precisely what it's for, although ordinal dates aren't currently an option. Go to preferences->date&time. For year-less dates, it'll auto-convert between [[October 28]] and [[28 October]], and for year-havin' dates it'll auto-convert between any of these 5: [[October 28]], [[1940]] [[28 October]] [[1940]] [[1940]] [[October 28]] [[1940]]-[[10-28]] [[1940-10-28]]
Yeah, I confess I don't really understand the point of these different formats. Is it just a "preference" thing, rather than an actual cultural standard? Who writes "1940 October 28" as standard, for instance? I would understand if the options were something like "28/10/1940" vs "10/28/1940" (American vs British dates for instance) but the chosen formats are just, um, odd. AFAIK hyphens between numbers in dates are much more common in countries like France, rather than any English speaking countries, which tend to use slashes. I recognise the last format as being common in Japan IIRC, but who would want to see that format in the middle of an English-speaking article? Or do these settings affect all users of MediaWiki?
The two most common seem to be the top two, with Americans preferring the first and many Europeans preferring the second. I suppose another
European English speakers, like, British people? :) FWIW, I would find "October 28th, 1940" the most natural.
format that was the same as the 2nd but with ordinals would please some folks as well, but perhaps it's somewhat harder to implement.
Hmm.
Steve