Unable to add timezones in time and date settings

[Martin Mrazik]

gnome-control-center 1:3.2.1-0ubuntu1, Ubuntu 11.10
gnome-control-center 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu24, Ubuntu 13.04

1. start gnome-control-center ("System Settings")
2. choose "Time & Date"
3. choose "Clock" and "Choose Locations..."
4. Click on a big green + sign
5. *Quickly* type the name of a time zone, e.g. "PST" (Pacific Standard Time) or "CET" (Central European Time), and press Enter.

What happens: An error icon appears next to what you typed, but it's not obvious what went wrong. The error icon has a tooltip, "You need to complete this location for it to appear in the menu", but this tooltip is not clear and its existence is not obvious anyway.

What should happen: Either some dialog appears where I can choose a timezone or I'm allowed to type actually something into the row.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I tried to reproduce this problem, but could not:
* The column had a "Location" header, making it relatively obvious what I was supposed to type in that column.
* Typing "PST" and pressing Enter didn't give me an empty row, it gave me Pstigrom, Afghanistan.
* Typing "CET" and pressing Enter didn't give me an empty row, it gave me the text "CET" and an error icon because it wasn't a recognized location.

Could you perhaps give more detail of the sequence of clicks and keypresses you used to achieve the empty row? Thanks.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Indicator Date and Time because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[J Nelson (jnmnus)]

I was going to report this problem too.

The way to reproduce the issue is to start with the original directions 1-4:

1. start gnome-control-center
2. choose "Time & Date"
3. choose "Clock" and "Choose Locations..."
4. Click on a big green + sign

NOW:
5. Click on the new row that is created/highlighted. You are shown a text box and the I-beam cursor appears.
6. Type something (anything) and press ENTER. Note that this step must be performed *quickly*, without any pauses between keypresses or the terminating ENTER key.

Actual Results
Because the sequence of keypresses terminated with ENTER was issued so quickly, the auto-complete function never appears! You are left with the text that was typed and the international "do not enter" symbol on the right (solid red-filled circle with white horizontal bar in the center). Hover the cursor over the text "You need to complete this location for it to appear in the menu."

The user never knows there's an auto-complete feature. The hover text is not helpful. There is no help button (or equivalent) to explain what to do.

Suggestions:
1 Tell the user to type a few letters and wait for auto-complete to kick in.
2. Speed up auto-complete so that it appears sooner.

-Jeff

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

The problem being described in the original post is that UTC is the only timezone available in the location list, and all the others are specific locations. The solution to this problem would be to add all the other timezones (PST, EST, etc) to the list.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This situation is now a bit more confusing than when I tried to reproduce it, because the ostensibly redundant "Location" column has been removed, so it's even less obvious that "UTC" is the only time zone that works.

Unfortunately, just letting you type a time zone abbreviation wouldn't help. For example, there are two different time zones with the abbreviation AMST, and four different time zones with the abbreviation CST. So the auto-completion behavior needs to change to make choosing a valid option more inevitable, *regardless* of whether it lets you enter a time zone rather than a location.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Well it doesn't need to be the abbreviation in that case. We could just put the full name of the timezone, with the abbreviation in braces after it, so we would have something like "Eastern Standard Time (EST)". Would that work?

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

An addendum to that is that we can still allow the user to search using
just the abbreviation, and show them all the matches as we currently do.

On 28 May 2013 13:55, Chris Wilson <email address hidden> wrote:

> Well it doesn't need to be the abbreviation in that case. We could just
> put the full name of the timezone, with the abbreviation in braces after
> it, so we would have something like "Eastern Standard Time (EST)". Would
> that work?
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to One
> Hundred Paper Cuts.
> Matching subscriptions: Papercut bug mail
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/894737
>
> Title:
> Unable to add timezones in time and date settings
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
> Triaged
> Status in The Date and Time Indicator:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> gnome-control-center 1:3.2.1-0ubuntu1, Ubuntu 11.10
> gnome-control-center 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu24, Ubuntu 13.04
>
> 1. start gnome-control-center ("System Settings")
> 2. choose "Time & Date"
> 3. choose "Clock" and "Choose Locations..."
> 4. Click on a big green + sign
> 5. *Quickly* type the name of a time zone, e.g. "PST" (Pacific Standard
> Time) or "CET" (Central European Time), and press Enter.
>
> What happens: An error icon appears next to what you typed, but it's
> not obvious what went wrong. The error icon has a tooltip, "You need
> to complete this location for it to appear in the menu", but this
> tooltip is not clear and its existence is not obvious anyway.
>
> What should happen: Either some dialog appears where I can choose a
> timezone or I'm allowed to type actually something into the row.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/894737/+subscriptions
>

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I was referring not to displaying the text, but entering the text. If someone typed "CST" and pressed Enter quickly, what should happen?

Maybe, both for places and time zones, we should ignore the Enter key unless you have either entered a unique value or highlighted an item in the completion menu.