[Design] Expando Date/Time fields

[Grant Baillie]

On Jan 11, 2006, at 1:26 , Mimi Yin wrote:

> Here's another proposal for expanding/contracting fields, this time  
> in the date/time area. (I believe Daniel brought this up on the  
> list as well a month ago.)
>
> In a nutshell, can we summarize date/time information into 2 lines  
> or less. Protect the user from all of the edit widgets for date/ 
> time. Only reveal them if they click into the date/time description  
> and/or some special edit button next to it. (not depicted below)
>
> I'm thinking there are internationalization issues here? Are there  
> ways we can experiment with this idea just in English first before  
> worrying about internationalizing it? (special English-only,  
> experimental modules?)
>
> http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/ExpandoDateTimeFields

The non-edit case can be internationalized fairly straightforwardly:  
ICU lets us generate separate localized strings for date and time,  
and then we just need to have a localizable string for "%s(start  
time) to %s(end time)".

The editing case seems trickier to me, since we can localize strings  
like "%s(date) at %s(time)", but making those strings be UI elements  
is hard. It may be good enough just to localize "at", but I'm not  
sure if that would always work. For example, it may not be correct in  
all languages to have the date be before the time.

How would that UI deal with events that cross day boundaries?

--Grant