Timestamp in Ubuntu Empathy theme doesn't show the date

[Nicolò Chieffo]

Binary package hint: adium-theme-ubuntu

Currently the theme only shows the time at which the message was received/sent.
This must definitely be changed to also show the date:
- if you leave the window open for more than 1 day you'll be confused
- when you open the window you'll see history messages that might be sent in previous days

Here's a really simple patch which will show the full timestamp in the first message of the bubble in this way:

2010/06/17 11:17

both the date and the time is formatted using the preferred locale.

There's no need to put the date in every message inside the bubble, because the bubble is automatically splitted if more than K minutes pass before sending another message.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: adium-theme-ubuntu 0.2-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-3.4-generic 2.6.35-rc3
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-3-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jun 16 11:15:17 2010
Dependencies:

InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=it_IT.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: adium-theme-ubuntu

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Thank you for helping with making Ubuntu better by reporting this bug. I'm confirming this and am accepting it as a paper cut since it is a small issue that affects users using the default installation.

It shouldn't be too hard to fix, probably just a few characters of XML(?) code, but it will improve the chat experience.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

The patch is already there!
We just need someone to review and commit.

[Tobias Wolf (towolf)]

Should show seconds also.

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

I agree that the date should be shown in history bubbles, but not in every bubble in the conversation.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Why not? Do you find it intrusive?

[Vish (vish)]

@Nicolò Chieffo: Can you attach a screenshot of the behavior with your patch?

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

The date changes only once every 24 hours. Printing it every few seconds during a chat conversation is naive. We can do better than this by (1) printing the date only when the date changes between successive messages and (2) showing the date in history bubbles. This would solve the problems mentioned with the exact amount of UI needed, not with way more UI than the user needs.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Actually it would be better to include seconds also in the following
messages attached in the same bubble, since it's not possible to
remove seconds when showing the date (or at least I couldn't find a
way to do it)

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Ok, so I'll only add the date in history.
This is the new patch.

It doesn't solve the problem of showing the date when it actually changes, since I think this must be done in javascript, which I don't know very well...

[Vish (vish)]

@Nicolò Chieffo: A screenshot of the latest version? :)
Not sure what exactly you mean by "only add the date in history." ?

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

Why show seconds?! Just because its possible to show seconds doesn't mean
that any user wants to see it. Keep it simple! Do you think a majority of
users would want to see seconds? What useful information does showing
seconds add? What kind of decision making does showing seconds enable?
Nothing whatsoever, it is completely useless data spew.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Maybe I didn't understand your request :)

This is what I thought you were asking (no screenshot available
because empathy won't log anymore after the libtelepathy-logger1
install):
- add the date and time (using your locale) in the first bubble only
for messages tagged as "history" (so the messages that you see in the
"previous conversation" window, and the first K messages you see when
you open a new conversation window)
- add only the time (with seconds, without date) in the following
messages of the same bubble
- remove the date and seconds in normal messages.

So the result is that nothing is changed when you chat normally.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

As I've already told I don't know how to hide seconds and keep the
time format using your own locale.
Your help is needed!

man strftime
[...]
%X The preferred time representation for the current locale without
              the date.
[...]

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

Please see the python documentation for the time module:

>> strftime("%I:%M")
'10:21'
>> strftime("%H:%M")
'22:21'

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

The examples you wrote don't follow the locale LC_TIME
1) you should know whether to use 12 hour or 24 hour format
2) you suppose that the time separator is :
3) you suppose that in all locales the hour is printed before minutes
(and maybe you are right :D)

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

Good point! I really don't know then.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

You know what?
Empathy always displays in 24H format... I've just checked the code
#define EMPATHY_TIME_FORMAT_DISPLAY_SHORT "%H:%M"

that's not fair!
I'll file a bug upstream

[Vish (vish)]

Nicolò Chieffo Have you reported the 24H format bug upstream? . Is it the cause of Bug #603043 ?

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Yes, I added the upstream link in that bug report.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Upstream fixed this problem in another way, so I'm invalidating the bugs.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Hi back, unfortunately this patch was committed to adium-theme-ubuntu.
This was a wrong decision: the upstream approach is to show the date only in history messages, and this is automatically done in empathy, so there's no need to patch the themes.

Please revert this patch, thanks!

[Vish (vish)]

Nicolò Chieffo , Hmm , what are you talking about? You closed this bug earlier and it doesnt seem the patch here was uploaded,
changelog mentions only two patches related to you:

adium-theme-ubuntu (0.3-0ubuntu1) maverick; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - History shown in Empathy chat window should be different
      from new messages (LP: #531811)
    - In chat rooms, empathy should not scroll to the bottom whenever
      a new message is received. (LP: #542806)

Or are you confusing with some other bug?

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I'm not confusing, I checked a few days ago that actually the patch was applied.
In fact now when you send/receive a message you see that instead of
the hours and minutes the new format is:
15/08/2010 20.01
can you confirm it?

[David A (davi-d-a)]

It's difficult to understand the flow of this conversation, and perhaps this is already addressed, but I will add my observation in Lucid. I am using empathy with a Google Talk account, and I find it extremely disconcerting when someone messages me and I see a past conversation (perhaps from many, many months ago) without a date stamp. There is nothing to indicate that the bubbles are from an earlier conversation apart from the time-of-day timestamps. On several occasions now this has led to confused conversations where I have replied to an old message and the recipient has no idea what I am talking about.

Surely a timestamp, with the *date*, should be shown if the previous bubble in that conversation is from a previous day?