Way back in the year 101

[Gary_M_Mugford]

I've added a date column. When I click on that field in the custom edit page, the default is 01 Jan 101. I have a default format of yyyy-MMM-dd. To edit the field, I double click on the 101 and change it to 2010 or whatever, as appropriate. Then I double click on 01, correct to the day and then immediate type in the three-letter code. IF you type in July, you will end up resetting in back to Jan.

Changing the default to yyyy-MM-dd operates identically.

Any ideas on what to change to change the default year to something a little more friendly to the drop-down calendar. Clicking month-by-month from the second century A.D. to the current era is tiring me out.

Thanks in advance for any help, GM

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Gary_M_Mugford

I've added a date column. When I click on that field in the custom edit page, the default is 01 Jan 101. I have a default format of yyyy-MMM-dd. To edit the field, I double click on the 101 and change it to 2010 or whatever, as appropriate. Then I double click on 01, correct to the day and then immediate type in the three-letter code. IF you type in July, you will end up resetting in back to Jan.

Changing the default to yyyy-MM-dd operates identically.

Any ideas on what to change to change the default year to something a little more friendly to the drop-down calendar. Clicking month-by-month from the second century A.D. to the current era is tiring me out.

Thanks in advance for any help, GM

Huh!
If I double click a CUSTOM date field, I get Today's date. No edit needed. my format is the default for my system (USA)

[chaley]

Like theducks, I don't see the behavior you describe, so we need to look a bit more carefully at what you are doing that is different from what I am doing.

I am on Win7/32 using calibre 0.7.8+ (I run from source). I created a date column with yyyy-MMM-dd format.

1) Double-clicking on an empty cell gives me today's date in the right format. The descriptions below now apply.
2) Double-clicking on a cell containing a date opens the cell for editing. The year is highlighted. I type a 4-digit number, and the highlight moves to the month. I type a 3-letter month code, and the highlight moves to the day. I type one or two digits, hit return, and the date is set.
3) Double-clicking on a cell then using the mouse to move the cursor also works.

I tried following your procedures and failed. I am not allowed to type any letters after double-clicking on the day (number). I am not allowed to type more than 3 letters if I double-click on the month.

I do note that if I do not type all 4 digits of the year or all three letters of the month, the date reverts to what it was before. This happens because the underlying toolkit fails to parse the date.

Just in case you are referring to the metadata editor, I tried the same experiment there. I note that the date format is not respected (this is a bug), but after taking that into account, the behavior is the same as described above.

What are you doing that is different?

As for the popup calendar, after you open in, double-click on the year and set it appropriately. You can then set the month using the drop-down list. Then setting the day isn't quite so onerous.

[Gary_M_Mugford]

I took a couple of cropped screen shots to show what I see [1] in the columns editor and then in the book editor's custom screen. I hope they have been uploaded correctly here. NOTE: I switched to yyyy-MM-dd in my most recent attempt to fix things.

Don't know what to say. I'm running 0.7.8 with completely updated WinXPSP3 with plenty of storage and memory on a decently powered machine. I DO program for a living and I run a Nexus database server. But nothing SQLite and that's what I understand is used by calibre. It's possible that the database server from AbstractSpoon's ToDoList product is SQLite and is interfering. But that's not running full time and hasn't been during this process.

0.7.8 DID get rid of an intregrity check issue that has plagued me through the last two or three updates.

At this point, I don't find it hard to believe that it is machine specific rather than a problem with calibre. But I'm at a loss as to HOW it is still functional, yet producing these anomalies.

GM

[Gary_M_Mugford]

I haven't been editing through direct cell editing of the main form. When I do, I get the 'normal' behaviour accounted for by other correspondents. Although i DO find it impossible to wipe out the date with either the backspace or delete keys.

No, my problem is in the metadata's editor custom data page.

GM

PS: It comes up undefined and changes to the year 101 date shown in the graphic upon clicking the field.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Gary_M_Mugford

I haven't been editing through direct cell editing of the main form. When I do, I get the 'normal' behaviour accounted for by other correspondents. Although i DO find it impossible to wipe out the date with either the backspace or delete keys.

No, my problem is in the metadata's editor custom data page.

GM

PS: It comes up undefined and changes to the year 101 date shown in the graphic upon clicking the field.

Year 101 = undefined date type

CONFIRMED 2 bugs (Linux)
1) The custom date field in MD-E does not honor the settings and uses the default
2) Impossible to "un-define" a date (main GUI and MD-E) once a date has been accepted

[chaley]

Originally Posted by theducks

Year 101 = undefined date type

CONFIRMED 2 bugs (Linux)
1) The custom date field in MD-E does not honor the settings and uses the default

Could you file a ticket for this, if you haven't already?
EDIT: Never mind. I already fixed it. /EDIT

2) Impossible to "un-define" a date (main GUI and MD-E) once a date has been accepted

Not impossible, just inconvenient. Set the date to 1 Jan 0101.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Gary_M_Mugford

I took a couple of cropped screen shots to show what I see [1] in the columns editor and then in the book editor's custom screen. I hope they have been uploaded correctly here. NOTE: I switched to yyyy-MM-dd in my most recent attempt to fix things.
[...]
At this point, I don't find it hard to believe that it is machine specific rather than a problem with calibre. But I'm at a loss as to HOW it is still functional, yet producing these anomalies.

There are clear problems with the Qt (the graphics toolkit) date editing widget. Not much I can do about Qt, unfortunately.

Using the metadata editor with the format set to dd-MMM-yyyy (because I have fixed the format bug and want to use the format that you see):
1) I confirm that clicking on an "undefined" date, it changes to 01 Jan 101.
2) Double-click on the day and change it to 10. Press tab to move to the month. The day change 'sticks'.
3) Type 'Jun' and press tab. The month reverts back to 'Jan' (thanks, Qt).
4) Press tab. The date 10-Jan-101 is stored, so the day stayed changed and the month stayed reverted.

Playing some, I find:
1) if I type a leading 0 into the year field, I am allowed only one more digit between 0 and 7 (why those)? If the first character is something other than a zero, then I can type more digits.
2) If I do not provide a 4-digit year, then the year reverts to its previous value when I leave the date editor. This means that I must change the year to something with 4 digits to make anything stick.
3) If the year has 4 digits, then month changes stick.

To summarize: if the year is changed first to have 4 digits, then from then on editing is reasonably well behaved.

I am looking at the impact of changing the default date to 01-Jan-1000. I think that might work around the editing problem. Of course, it will also prevent entering dates before 1000, which could be a problem where someone has images of ancient manuscripts.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

Could you file a ticket for this, if you haven't already?
EDIT: Never mind. I already fixed it. /EDITNot impossible, just inconvenient. Set the date to 1 Jan 0101.

I was trying 101 as the year,

[theducks]

Originally Posted by chaley

Playing some, I find:
1) if I type a leading 0 into the year field, I am allowed only one more digit between 0 and 7 (why those)? If the first character is something other than a zero, then I can type more digits.
2) If I do not provide a 4-digit year, then the year reverts to its previous value when I leave the date editor. This means that I must change the year to something with 4 digits to make anything stick.
3) If the year has 4 digits, then month changes stick.

To summarize: if the year is changed first to have 4 digits, then from then on editing is reasonably well behaved.

Wow! That was an odd quirk (bug) that you had to DIG to discover. I use your date format (Ex US Navy, way of dates. I also use a 24hr clock on my system)
Thanks again, for all the work

[chaley]

Originally Posted by chaley

I am looking at the impact of changing the default date to 01-Jan-1000. I think that might work around the editing problem. Of course, it will also prevent entering dates before 1000, which could be a problem where someone has images of ancient manuscripts.

Kovid is uncomfortable with this change, so the default date stays at 1/Jan/101. The other fixes will be included.

To work around the Qt problem, be sure that the year always has 4 digits. Add a leading zero for years before 1000. (And no, I haven't figured out a way to get Qt to add that zero. )

@theducks: thanks for the kind words. To be honest, the behavior is strange enough where I don't trust the completeness and correctness of my evidence. For all I know, the behavior depends on whether it is Thursday.

[Gary_M_Mugford]

Gee, sorry to have caused all this ruckus. Back in the murky fog of ancient times, Delphi's masters made a beachhead in a Linux version but I never went anywhere near it (Kylix). Still have the disks somewhere.

Might I suggest an alternative to get around Kovid's potential dislike for fiddling with the date, for fear of rupturing those with existing setups. What about a ModernDate type that defaults to the now 1/1/1980 (or something like 1/1/2000 or TODAY's date). Just an idea.

As for editing, as I said, I found double-clicking on 101, changing it to 2010 and then double clicking on 01 and changing it appropriately, followed by an appopriate month is fairly routine. I've been doing book reviews all this month on the blog and I wait until I have done a bunch and then update calibre.

This is far from arduous.

Thanks for verifying I wasn't nuts. GM

[chaley]

Just discovered something while playing with the date code. The mouse wheel works fine when editing dates, and doesn't seem to suffer from the (same) strange behavior. For example, I can easily change 01/Jan/101 to 10/Feb/2010 by clicking on the 01 and using the wheel to advance to 10, pressing tab and using the wheel to advance to Feb, then pressing tab and typing 2010. For some reason, when using the wheel the changes stick.

@Gary_M_Mugford: Nothing to be sorry for. Your persistence led us to find some bugs. I am working on an alternate solution for setting undefined dates to a 'modern' value that (I think) won't trigger Kovid's concerns. Of course, it may trigger different ones.

[chaley]

To make things easier (I hope), I changed the edit metadata dialogs by adding a button for each custom date field. Pushing the button sets the associated date field to 'today', after which you can edit it if necessary.

[theducks]

I just tried to clear (make un-defined) a custom fields date. (mm/dd/yyyy)
the old 1/1/101 did not work. I found that using 01/01/0000 resulted in "undefined"