On 2019-09-13 at 11:50, David Wright wrote: > On Thu 12 Sep 2019 at 23:14:52 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote: > >> On 2019-09-12 at 21:49, David Wright wrote: >>> 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? > > No: I'm the one suggesting it's neither desirable nor needed. > So "Wherever you need to" doesn't help. ...this feels like taking me out of context. The question you asked was "Where would you use it?". In response to that, saying just "Wherever you need to" would seem to be short for "Wherever you need to use it", which doesn't even attempt to answer the question. What I actually said, however, is "Wherever you need to specify midnight in a form where [abbreviations would be expected]". That actually has content, albeit not much (because the answer seemed obvious enough to me that I didn't expect the question to need to be asked), and I don't see how your response here acknowledges that. Whether accommodating other people's expectations, by using an abbreviation where they expect one, constitutes "desirable" or "needed" is probably a debatable question. I think this may be one case where I just concede ground to the world's expectations, in the interest of choosing my battles. >>> 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. > > Oh, don't misunderstand me. I'm not arguing against using 12-hour time > in ordinary conversation and in "real life". I've produced scores of > tickets, posters and programmes with 12-hour times, and wouldn't dream > of designing one that advertised a concert at 18:30 rather than 6.30 pm. > I don't design posters with output generated by a date command, but if > that became a necessity through sheer quantity, I would use > date +'%l.%M %P', sure (but I'd add a test for 12). So... I don't think I understand what position you *are* taking, then. >>> 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. > > I don't think they make a conscious *decision* to use leading zeroes, > they just use the same old %I rather than %_I (≡ %l) because they > hadn't thought about it, and their output didn't jar. > > Conventional: 8 pm 9 pm 10 pm 11 pm > Casual: 08 pm 09 pm 10 pm 11 pm > > I've omitted the minutes so that the jarring effect might be more obvious. > > When reading fully specified times, with minutes and seconds, I think > an experimental psychologist would be able to show that a leading zero > fools the brain into parsing the time in 24-hour clock mode, and then > the am/pm at the end causes reparsing, which slows comprehension. > Perhaps it wouldn't work like that in America; I don't know. I'd have preferred that myself, but I've actually gotten dinged by this at work. In the approval-request form for applying a proposed change, I specified the implementation time for the change as "07:00" - including the leading zero specifically as a way to indicate that this was 24-hour time - and got the form sent back to me for clarification about whether I meant AM or PM. Purely anecdotal, and at most one data point at that, but it does serve to indicate that the leading zero does not produce that effect in all cases. -- 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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