microsoft
Add support for time in date calculations
Problem Statement
The date calculation feature is useful but lacks the option to include the time of day. Also, it would be nice to have a deadline countdown feature.
Evidence or User Insights
Instead of going online to compute event duration or deadlines online, we can do it offline with the calculator.
Proposal
It will enable the computation of different forms of time difference operations.
Goals
It will help users see the exact time taken for some event until another time/date. It will also help track a countdown or deadline in some other timezone.
Non-Goals
Low-Fidelity Concept
A lot of functionality is at https://www.timeanddate.com
This is your friendly Microsoft Issue Bot. I've seen this issue come in and have gone to tell a human about it.
Thanks for the feature suggestion! This is really well thought-out, and we really appreciate it. Let's keep this idea open for discussion so the community has the chance to provide feedback. Check out our New Feedback Process for more info on the user-centered process we follow for new feature development.
The date calculation feature is useful but lacks the option to include the time of day. Also, it would be nice to have a deadline countdown feature.
To me, these feel like they might be two distinct ideas. Would you agree? If so, we prefer to file separate suggestion for each idea so we can discuss them indvidually.
Thanks for the feature suggestion! This is really well thought-out, and we really appreciate it. Let's keep this idea open for discussion so the community has the chance to provide feedback. Check out our New Feedback Process for more info on the user-centered process we follow for new feature development.
The date calculation feature is useful but lacks the option to include the time of day. Also, it would be nice to have a deadline countdown feature.
To me, these feel like they might be two distinct ideas. Would you agree? If so, we prefer to file separate suggestion for each idea so we can discuss them indvidually.
I like your idea of including the time of day!
deadline countdown feature
What's the difference with the Countdown feature available in the Alarm&Clock app?
What's the difference with the Countdown feature available in the Alarm&Clock app?
I think what he wants to do is set an alarm at a specific date and time, and then have a countdown timer until the alarm triggers.
@grochocki is right, they are two features. One is a small change by adding a time field (and hopefully a time zone option). The other is not a timer per se, just shows the relative "distance" to an exact time (and time zone). So it just shows a +/- days, hours, minutes from NOW.
date calculations can be tricky, especially with daylight saving zones.
Note that a day is not always 24 hours, so we need to think about things like what it means to add any time span to a given timestamp.
Also a year is not always the same length, so converting one year into months/weeks/days/etc. would lead to different results.
We reviewed the pitch and would love to explore this idea further! I think this pitch is a great start, but there are still some open questions. Moving this into planning to iron out some of the details. Keep in mind that not all ideas that make it into the planning phase are guaranteed to make it to release.
A couple top-of-mind open questions:
- To what extent, if at all, do we allow users to customize the timezone? Should calculations be timezone agnostic? Can they be?
- How do we extend the existing date calculator to optionally support time (e.g., new mode, checkbox in existing date calculator mode, etc.)?
Let's focus on just the part of the pitch that adds times to the date calculator. That is, the part of the pitch that suggests adding a deadline countdown is out of scope for now. If you do not think the Alarms & Clock apps covers the scenario you have in mind, consider submitting a new issue to discuss that idea separately. I've updated the title to reflect this scoping.
I created calculator-specs/datetimecalculator to track progress. For more information on next steps, check out our spec workflow.
This pitch looks like it has everything it needs for review. In the meantime, we'll keep this idea open for discussion so the community has the chance to provide feedback. Check out our New Feedback Process for more info on the user-centered process we follow for new feature development.
Problem Statement
The date calculation feature is useful but lacks the option to include the time of day. Also, it would be nice to have a deadline countdown feature.
Evidence or User Insights
Instead of going online to compute event duration or deadlines online, we can do it offline with the calculator.
Proposal
It will enable the computation of different forms of time difference operations.
Goals
It will help users see the exact time taken for some event until another time/date. It will also help track a countdown or deadline in some other timezone.
Non-Goals
Low-Fidelity Concept
A lot of functionality is at https://www.timeanddate.com
I believe it should be in the converter section as TimeZone converter. Please refer the below images for a rough idea.
The same image with some description:
I agree that if you factor in time zones, it behaves more like a converter, though Alarms & Clock already supports this world clock view:
I think it is reasonable to possibly add time zone support here too, but, but from the generic date/time calculator perspective, I think it might be simpler to treat all calculations in local time, and leave the time zone conversion separate. That could be a standalone time converter, or perhaps there is a way to convert the output of date/time calculator to a specific timezone from local time.
I don't get how the engine works. Nevermind, I won't work on it. But can someone else maybe work on this?
I opened a similar order on May 21, 2020.
https://github.com/microsoft/calculator/issues/1241
And today I saw that it was closed because it is similar to this request that is previous.
I would like to register here is my need, and that of other people who work with subtitle, audio and video timing.
The calculations we make do not include a date. Just hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds.
It would use the 24-hour standard, or military standard.
HH:MM:SS.mmm
The milliseconds would be a kind of pennies or cents for a normal blender.
Something after the point or dot.
If you enter 1234 you will have 00:12:24.000
If you enter 123456 you will have 12:34:56.000
If you enter 1234.789 you will have 00:12:34.789
And of course, do the 4 operations. + - * /
In my request, I asked for a tab similar to the calculation of dates, but only for calculating Time.
It seems that this order here is combining the two factors: Date and Time.
I just hope that, due to the Time Zone difficulties reported here, this ability to calculate hours will not be implemented.
Maybe do it in two steps. First a tab to calculate time.
And then add to the date calculation the possibility to calculate with Date+Time.
Comodore pocket calculators did proper time calculations. Don't see a reason for not implementing something similar.
YouTube: Calculators for embedded systems engineers and programmers
Hello, I need just to calculate today working time. For example: I come to office at 8:45 and leave at 21:11. How many hours and minutes I spent today in office? In the calculator should be simple operation "21:11-8:45= " Why for that simple update need about 5 years? I will build my own app faster then update.
