Subj : date format ideas
To   : All
From : Ken Bowley
Date : Wed Oct 05 2016 07:49:56

   Hello everybody!

I was talking with a friend/co-worker about the date format issue with MBSE, 
and he asked if we could just use standard strftime formats.  This seems like 
an idea that would reduce much of the complication involved with this change.

The changes to records would be a small string (6 bytes?) for the default 
system format, and the same for user preferences.

Display changes would be very simple, since they could just use strftime to 
format the date display.

The GetDate function in mbsebbs/input.c would need to need to understand the 
strftime format (or a reduced/simplified subset that includes %Y, %m, and %d), 
and adjust the handling of user import accordingly.

The language files currently have the date format hardcoded for the prompts to 
enter dates for "Date of Birth" and for entering a date when searching files. 
These will need to be more flexible.  Perhaps something similar to what is 
needed for GetDate will work for templating the date format in the language 
files.

Along with these changes is having MBSE use a time_t rather than a string when 
possible so we can get rid of code (only two places that I can think of at the 
moment) that manipulates a date string into a YYYYMMDD format before turning 
it into an integer for comparison and sorting.

Ken


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