Date-Time Entry Widget (Old Notes from 0.5 planning)

• deferred to 0.6.

General

• The user can enter text in a single field to specify date and time.
• The field is subdivided into portions, date first then time. For example, if the user enters a month and day the cursor will move to the year section. NOTE: a visual might help with the explaination here.
• The user cannot specify a time only, typing 2p only into the field will try and resolve to the date.
• The widget supports 2 formats for dates: MM/DD/YY and a text format like Sep 21, 2004.
• Based on completion the text format is displayed ie: if the user enters 3/3/05, it completes to Mar 3, 2005.
• The widget supports 2 formats for times: HH:MM using the 24 hr clock and a text format like 2-4p.
• Based on completion the text format is displayed ie: if the user enters 14:15-15:15, it completes to 2:15-3:15p.
• Only an event with a specific date (month, day and year) can be put on the calender.
• Events and tasks with only a year or a month and year can be created but they will only exist as list items in the all collection. They will not appear on the calendar views.
• Workflow steps
  • 1. type.
  • 2. auto-complete.
  • 3. cursor moves to next date portion (ie: year, time etc).
  • 4. press Enter or tab out of date field to be done.
  • 5. validation occurs.
• Errors on validate are handled when user tabs out of the field or hits enter. NOTE: still closing on the exact visual display since we want to look for an alternative to the ? used for email validation.

Dates

• Date MM/DD/YY format rules
  • adding MM/DD/ auto-completes year MM/DD/YY.
  • the year completion is based on whether or not that Month and Day has passed for this year as of today's date ie: 03/05/ would become Mar 5, 2005 and 11/5/ would become Nov 5, 2004. The year doesn't auto-complete until the user types a closing / or ,.
  • typing in 2, 5, 46 only results in an error.
  • entering 04/04/ would complete to Apr 4, 2005 NOT Apr 2004.
• Date text format rules
  • use whatever unique letter set is enough for auto-completion.
  • MA -> Mar, JA -> Jan (min of 2 letters for month). The user could type January in full.
  • typing in 2004 is acceptable, event in the list only for this year.
  • 04/2004 is also acceptable and would resolve to Apr 2004.
  • JA, 2005 is valid and would complete to Jan 2004 and appear in the list view.
  • We should handle resolving 1st, 3rd, 5th if the user enters those.
• Date ranges
  • the widget can support a date range indicated by using a dash '-'
  • 05/05/04-05/15/04 completes to May 5-15, 2004.
  • 05/05-05/15 completes to May 5-15, 2005.
  • 05/05-06 is completes to May 5-6, 2005.
  • May 4-5, 2004 is valid, May 4-5 completes to May 4-5, 2005.
  • May-Jun 2004 or MA-JU 2004 is valid. MA-JUN resolves to May-Jun 2005 and is also valid.

Times

• Formats
  • User can enter either HH:MM or text version of time.
  • You do not have to enter a time range, ie: you may know that a meeting is to start at 1:00p but you want to leave it open-ended.
  • Entering text version of time without specifying AM or PM resolves to the 24 hr clock ie: 2-4 -> 2-4a.
  • Need to support 2-4PM and 2PM-4PM and resolve to 2-4p.
  • No support for recognition of keywords like noon, midnight etc.

• *[OI^?]
• The way I have this specified, there is no way to enter something like May 5, 2004 10p - May 6, 2004 2a.
  • MimiYin Could we recognize, May 5, 2004 10pm-2am?
• Mimi and I drilled down alot on the date stuff but less so on the time so there are likely a bunch of scenarios missing.
  • MimiYin Yes, including some scenarios that might come up when users go back into the date entry widget to edit the date
• I am afraid there are a number of other keywords we want to use ie: next Tues, every third Wed, bi-monthly....how complex do we want to get. This is an engineering questions but I think the date widget will have to have a pretty strict structure in order to work.
  • MimiYin A couple of simplifications for .5:
    • Only accept full dates (no dates that are just months or years)
    • Only accept number formats: 05/12/04
  • On the flip-side, do we want to recognize:
    • Days of the week: M, Tuesday, W, Th, Fr, Sa, Su for dates within "this week"
    • End of day (5PM), Tomorrow, End of week (Friday at 5PM), Next week (Monday at 6AM), Next month (1st, 6AM)