On 2019-09-12 at 21:49, David Wright wrote: > On Thu 12 Sep 2019 at 12:42:01 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote: > >> On 2019-09-12 at 12:03, David Wright wrote: >>> It might be ambiguous if m were also an abbreviation for midnight, >>> which I've never come across. >> >> Neither have I, but I also haven't come across any *other* abbreviation >> for it which might be used in this type of context (have you?), and "M" >> is just as intuitive a choice for abbreviating "midnight" as it is for >> abbreviating "meridiem". >> >> One could argue "M" for "midnight" and "N" for "noon", but then you lose >> the intuitiveness of M for meridiem, and people would mishear the two as >> each other in nonline conversation all the time anyway. > > I don't see a need for a one-letter abbreviation for midnight, nor the > wisdom in introducing one that's already used in the same context. > Where would you use it? Wherever you need to specify midnight in a form where specifying any other time would get the "AM"/"PM"/"M"(eridiem) abbreviation. To have a two-letter abbreviation for midnight but a one-letter one for noon might be acceptable, although it would feel lopsided to me, but just offhand I don't know of any suitable candidate to be that two-letter abbreviation. Again, do you have any suggestions? > Why not just drop 12-hour times? I don't think I've ever formatted a > 12-hour time on a computer (unless you want to count the example > quoted below). This isn't limited to the context of "on a computer". I think I originally came up with the notion of referring to noon as "12:00 M" in a context of mentioning the times in out-loud conversation; the abbreviations are certainly used in more than just computerized contexts. For myself, I likely would drop 12-hour time. But as long as the world isn't agreeing to do that, pursuing ways to make 12-hour time work more logically and less ambiguously is still worthwhile. And of course part of the reason I like the idea is because I find the odd looks I get when I refer to "12:00 M" without previous explanation to be amusing. >>> When I read emails, I only see the Date: line from the header, and >>> the timedates used in the quotation lines. One thing I find odd is >>> mixing AM/PM with hours containing a leading zero. I was always >>> taught that 7 p.m. or 7pm was not written as 07, but I see that a >>> lot here. Contrast >>> >>> $ TZ=Europe/Paris date +'%I.%M %p' >>> 06.01 PM >>> $ TZ=Europe/Paris date +'%l.%M %p' >>> 6.01 PM >>> $ >> >> That's probably to ease parsing by automated tools, such as sort, so >> that they don't have to worry about handling field width. > > That wouldn't be possible anyway, because you don't have control over, > for example, whether the time follows the date, and other variability. That just makes it even harder; not impossible, but unwieldy and problematic enough that very few are likely to bother with trying. > No. I think it's more likely that most people don't notice > conventions unless they're brought to their attention. Of course, if > you're old enough, you had years of pre-digital experience when no > one thought of padding dates and times with 0s. That might be why I > notice 'odd' formatting like this. I may be confused. I thought we were talking about why some people / tools use zero-padded hours fields with 12-hour time; I don't see how the decision to do that could in any way arise from failure to notice a convention without having it pointed out. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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