Offer toggle option to use more compact date/time reporting in Caja

[ericmarceau]

As part of my recent activities, I finally took the time to define some code logic, albeit in awk, to generate the kind of compact date/time reporting that I prefer.

Namely, if a file's age is 24 hours or less, it only reports the time portion of the last modification of the file. If it is older than that, it then only reports the date of that last modification. The formats are, of course, 24-hour time clock and YYYY-MM-DD respectively.

Those would be reported mutually exclusively.

I would also like to see that as an option for the basic shell/bash ls command as well.

The logic is implemented in the myLs() function in the script found in that posting.

Is there any chance that MATE/Caja developers could see their way to implementing that change?

Thank you.

[ricmarques]

Hi, @ericmarceau

(Usual disclaimer / reminder: please note that I'm just another Forum user here. I'm NOT an Ubuntu Developer and/or Ubuntu MATE Developer and/or MATE Developer and/or Caja Developer).

You wrote:

@ericmarceau

"(...) the kind of compact date/time reporting that I prefer.
Namely, if a file's age is 24 hours or less, it only reports the time portion of the last modification of the file. If it is older than that, it then only reports the date of that last modification. The formats are, of course, 24-hour time clock and YYYY-MM-DD respectively. (...)".

Well, in "Caja", if you go to the "Edit" menu and then click on the "Preferences" option (last option of that menu), that will open the "File Management Preferences" window. If you then click on the "Display" tab of that window, there are three different options in the "Format:" dropdown list field in the "Date" section. The last of those 3 format options is similar to what you want (namely it is "today at [ current time]"). Let me show you a screenshot of that window to better illustrate what I'm talking about:

Other than that, I've found the following related Issue (submitted in the year 2016) - "custom date formats needed (or how do i add more to the display settings dropdown?)" - and a Feature Request (submitted last year, that is, in 2023) - "Feature Request: CAJA customized format for date+time" - in "Caja" 's GitHub Repository. You may wish to check them out and eventually participate in the Issue and/or in the Feature Request:

custom date formats needed (or how do i add more to the display settings dropdown?)

Feature Request: CAJA customized format for date+time

I hope this helps

[ericmarceau]

Thank you, @ricmarques,

I will check out those URLs and see what I can do.
As for the preference window for MATE, I had seen that, but that is not what I want. I don't want the "today at " taking desktop real-estate by forcing the date column to be wider than it needs to be. I know it isn't much, but it is still anoying to have to scroll horizontally more than I have to, to get visibility of what I want to see.

I have some file names that are "expressively" long for visual recognition/attributes, so my current default setting is as seen here (which I still need to tweak manually every time I start my computer):

[ericmarceau]

Thank you again, @ricmarques,

Email sent to [email protected] , as directed by GNU, for the feature request.

Submitted bug/enhancement to Launchpad for coreutils.

I've added my comments to the discussions at:

custom date formats needed (or how do i add more to the display settings dropdown?)

Feature Request: CAJA customized format for date+time