[Ward]

When I specify a Due Date, most of the time I type in "today" or "tomorrow" or use the pop-up calendar.

I just typed "8/14" and pressed return -- "8/8/07" appeared. I tried again - same result. Finally, I typed "8 14" -- "8/14/07" appeared!

Are others seeing this?

[Craig]

No, my version (89950) parses 8/14 correctly.

[Ward]

When I opened this thread, I was mistakenly running rev. 89910. I've updated to rev. 89950, and I'm still seeing "8/14" become "8/8/07".

[pvonk]

Originally Posted by Ward

When I opened this thread, I was mistakenly running rev. 89910. I've updated to rev. 89950, and I'm still seeing "8/14" become "8/8/07".

Rev: 89911 and now 89950

8/14 comes up 8/14/07 for me.

[anna]

Do you have a non-standard character set?

[Ward]

Originally Posted by anna

Do you have a non-standard character set?

I'm running OS X 10.4.10 defaults for the USA.

Since no one else has reported this problem, it seems to be something unique to my environment. My first SWAG was my rich collection of Unsanity haxies, which work fine for me. I disabled them all, and OmniWeb still doesn't like my slashes.

[Ward]

After my previous post, I wondered whether my International Dates Format might be a factor.

Some experimenting with Dates Formats shows that's the root of the problem. Consider these settings and OmniFocus' behavior:

Region: United States

"8/3" becomes "8/3/07"
"8 3" becomes "8/3/07"

Region: United Kingdom

"8/3" becomes "3/8/07"
"8 3" becomes "8/3/07"

There seem to be two OmniFocus bugs regarding United Kingdom dates:

1. Why are "8/3" and "8 3" treated differently?

2. Why do dates always display in United States format?

In my case, I discovered I'm using a Custom Dates format, with United Kingdom format for dates with a month word and United States format for pure numeric dates, e.g., 5 Jan 2007 and 1/5/2007.

So there's a third bug:

3. OmniFocus has been interpreting my pure numeric dates in UK format even though my Custom numeric format is US.

[submitted as formal feedback]

[xmas]

It is very difficult to guess what someone means when they enter just 2 numbers, so we have to use your date formats to try and determine what you mean.

What we're doing in OF is looking at your date formats and assigning the numbers you're entering according to the order that your month, day and year appear in your date format.

The problem that you're running into is that there are 2 different formats that we're looking at, depending on how you entered the date. When you enter using a "/" then we're looking at your short date format (this is likely the one that you've customized), I imagine that your short date format is "d/m/y". When you use space, then we don't know for sure that you're entering a formatted date (slash is clearly part of a formatted date). In that case we're starting with your "medium date format" which is probably formatted "m/d/y".

So, we're basically taking your "3/8" which we thought was entered as "m/d/y" and then displaying it as "d/m/y" (or the other way around, I'm not sure which of 3 and 8 is the month and which the day).

Clearly this is not what you're expecting, which means we have more work to do. It would be most helpful if you could use the submit feedback form to let us know what you'd like to see, and also what your short and medium date formats are.

thanks!

[Ward]

Originally Posted by xmas

It is very difficult to guess what someone means when they enter just 2 numbers, so we have to use your date formats to try and determine what you mean.

If the International Dates format is United Kingdom, it shouldn't make any difference whether a fully numeric date has slashes because all forms of the date are day month year. So 3 Aug 2007, 3/8/07 and 3 8 07 should be equivalent.

Likewise, it seems obvious that two numbers means a numeric date (i.e., Short format), whether or not there are any slashes. If a month word appears, it's one of the three other date formats (i.e., Medium, Long, Full). So if a user (like me) has a Custom Dates format, where the Short/numeric order does not agree with the other orders, that shouldn't make any difference -- pure numbers are in the Short order.

Turning to date display, OmniFocus has addition problems illustrated in this screen snippet taken with United Kingdom Dates format selected in System Preferences:



1. The pure numeric dates are in United States format.

2. Pure numeric dates (Short format) appear where there is room for at least Medium format.

For a demo of dynamic date display formatting, open an Apple Mail Inbox window, and adjust the width of the Date Received column.

[submitted as formal feedback]

[Craig]

Originally Posted by Ward

For a demo of dynamic date display formatting, open an Apple Mail Inbox window, and adjust the width of the Date Received column.
[/SIZE]

Hey, that's cool!