&In BOINC Manager, the SETI Client on my G4 displays (as an example) 3pm on Christmas day as "12/25/2007 15:00:00", whereas Climateprediction on my G5 and also SETI on another G4 shows as "25/12/2007 15:00:00". I am in the UK and have set System Preferences for dates and time identically on all the computers concerned.

It may well be relevant that Tasks and Messages pages show dates in the same order, but with the month in text which, of course, is not confusing ("Tue Dec 25 15:00:00; for the former and "Tue 25 Dec 15:00:00" for the latter).

As far as I can see, this does not relate to the settings in my System Preferences being identical on all hosts, so assume it must somehow be dependent on the SETI Client. In fact, I amended one of the settings and it did not alter the display in BOINC Manager after rebooting the computer. So, I assume there must be a preference set in BOINC Manager. Am I able to correct this? I have not found any preferences regarding date and time formatting in the menus of BOINC Manager. I do not understand why only one computer has this problem.

If there is no informed reply within the next couple of weeks or so on this board (which does not seem to be as well used as it ought to be), I'll try on Number Crunching Board.

Keith

&In BOINC Manager, the SETI Client on my G4 displays (as an example) 3pm on Christmas day as "12/25/2007 15:00:00", whereas Climateprediction on my G5 and also SETI on another G4 shows as "25/12/2007 15:00:00". I am in the UK and have set System Preferences for dates and time identically on all the computers concerned.

It may well be relevant that Tasks and Messages pages show dates in the same order, but with the month in text which, of course, is not confusing ("Tue Dec 25 15:00:00; for the former and "Tue 25 Dec 15:00:00" for the latter).

Exactly where are you seeing those short-form date displays? (BOINC is the client; SETI@home Enhanced is a science application.) The only dates I can see are in the Tasks and Messages panels, and AFAIK they have never followed any of the formats in my system prefs, but always read “Wkdy DD Mth HH:MM:SS YYYY”.

What version(s) of BOINC and Mac OS are you running? All your hosts the same?

---

&In BOINC Manager, the SETI Client on my G4 displays (as an example) 3pm on Christmas day as "12/25/2007 15:00:00", whereas Climateprediction on my G5 and also SETI on another G4 shows as "25/12/2007 15:00:00". I am in the UK and have set System Preferences for dates and time identically on all the computers concerned.

It may well be relevant that Tasks and Messages pages show dates in the same order, but with the month in text which, of course, is not confusing ("Tue Dec 25 15:00:00; for the former and "Tue 25 Dec 15:00:00" for the latter).

Exactly where are you seeing those short-form date displays? (BOINC is the client; SETI@home Enhanced is a science application.) The only dates I can see are in the Tasks and Messages panels, and AFAIK they have never followed any of the formats in my system prefs, but always read “Wkdy DD Mth HH:MM:SS YYYY”.

What version(s) of BOINC and Mac OS are you running? All your hosts the same?

This is very strange.
You can see what the cpu versions are from my list of computers,
2 G4s and a G5 working on SETI.
All are running BOINC Manager 5.10.21 (but the difference has been there before this version).
All are running OSX 10.4.10 and have the same System time and date settings.
I even tried changing the settings here and rebooting, but that had no effect.

I agree that the dates appear in both panels for Tasks and Messages, but they're not the same format.
Time in Messages is in the format you quote as “Wkdy DD Mth HH:MM:SS YYYY”.
But Report deadline is in the short format "DD/MM/YYYY HH;MM:SS" (apologies for MM used twice).

The anomaly is that the day and month are reversed on one of the G4s (ID 3734525) on both panels.
It's the format in common usage in the US, hence "9/11", which, if it had been in the UK, would have been known as "11/9". My assumption is that one of the files, somewhere in "BOINC Data" is setting preferences for these time formats.

It's annoying, but not the end of the world!! But it would be nice to know why.
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. i look forward to further light on this odd behaviour.

Keith

P.S.
Both G4s are running seti_enhanced-ppc-v7.1mb-g4-nographics
and the G5 is running seti_enhanced-ppc-v7.1-g5-nographics
Keith

Time in Messages is in the format you quote as “Wkdy DD Mth HH:MM:SS YYYY”.
But Report deadline is in the short format "DD/MM/YYYY HH;MM:SS".

On both of the systems I have here, which are running older versions of BOINC, the longer format is used in both panels.

My assumption is that one of the files, somewhere in "BOINC Data" is setting preferences for these time formats.
It's annoying, but not the end of the world!! But it would be nice to know why.

Indeed … I’ve never noticed a preference setting for that, but I’ll try and remember to survey the other assorted Macs on my account, to see if any pattern is discernable …

You might try asking about this in the BOINC forum, as I don’t think it’s a S@h-specific issue.

P.S.
Both G4s are running seti_enhanced-ppc-v7.1mb-g4-nographics
and the G5 is running seti_enhanced-ppc-v7.1-g5-nographics

BTW Alex Kan has recently made newer versions available: see the optimized-apps thread in NC.

Odysseus

I now see how you got the same format in both Tasks and Messages panels.

When I switch to "Accessible View" from the View menu, I do, in fact, get as you stated, the same format on both panels. I always prefer to use "Grid View" with the sortable columns, which then shows the differing formats as I mentioned previously. That, of course, is why you were puzzled by my description of the "short form date display" when I had not specified my use of the "Grid View" option.

Out of interest, I looked at the "Accessible View" on the recalcitrant G4. Both panels still showed the day-of-month AFTER the month, but in the extended format.

I examined the folder/files in the BOINC Data/locale folder, and found that en_US/BOINC Manager.mo and uk/wxstd.mo files are apparently the same (dated 2/10/2007) on both my G4s. So, there would no cause for any difference here.

BREAK HERE TO UPGRADE THAT G4 --- Now I'm back....

Thanks for reminder about Alex Kan's latest version. I have upgraded on the recalcitrant G4, but with the usual permissions problem. However, I the upgraded BOINC Manager to 5.10.24 and that righted the permissions and recovered my cache of tasks in hand, and loaded 5.27 as well. Just got to do the same on the other Macs now. But it (as expected) did not cure the date format problem.

Keith

Well, I feel quite pleased with myself.
Nobody in the whole wide world out there managed to find the answer for me, but I've found it myself.

It's quite simple when you know the answer.
BOINC Manager main menu Advanced/Options.../Language Selection needed changing from English(U.S.) to English(U.K.). Then quit and restart BOINC Manager.
I'm just surprised I did not find that before and even more surprised that nobody else did!!!

Keith

Well, I feel quite pleased with myself.
Nobody in the whole wide world out there managed to find the answer for me, but I've found it myself.

It's quite simple when you know the answer.
BOINC Manager main menu Advanced/Options.../Language Selection needed changing from English(U.S.) to English(U.K.). Then quit and restart BOINC Manager.
I'm just surprised I did not find that before and even more surprised that nobody else did!!!

Keith

It appears that that option handles more than laguage. It seems that it takes into account other localization options.

Taras

---

It appears that that option handles more than language. It seems that it takes into account other localization options.

Taras

Yes, Taras, I agree, it's altering time formatting. But I have just noticed that BOINC Manager "My computer" near top of the page now shows localized time as UTC+1, whereas it had previously been shown incorrectly during the summer months as as UTC+0. I had assumed this was a bug corrected in version 5.10.26 to compensate for BST (which ends next week incidentally, back to GMT).

This does not seem to be anything to do with the change of setting to English(U.K.) in BOINC Manager as English(U.S.) would certainly should not have been UTC+0 (and it covers several time bands, anyway).

Having said that, I've just tried changing back to English(U.S.) and restarting BOINC, but it still shows UTC+1, so I'm back to the assumption it's to do with 5.10.26 completely independent of the BOINC "localized language" option.

Keith

(Combining a couple of replies)

When I switch to "Accessible View" from the View menu, I do, in fact, get as you stated, the same format on both panels. I always prefer to use "Grid View" with the sortable columns, which then shows the differing formats as I mentioned previously. That, of course, is why you were puzzled by my description of the "short form date display" when I had not specified my use of the "Grid View" option.

All my BOINC clients but one (which I’m seriously considering replacing with an older version anyway, because of other misbehaviour, much less ‘cosmetic’ in nature) are older than the “Grid View”—I guess the older style of layout is the same as the new “Accessible View”.

BOINC Manager main menu Advanced/Options.../Language Selection needed changing from English(U.S.) to English(U.K.). Then quit and restart BOINC Manager.

I’m glad that sorted you out … but I’m afraid it’s no help to me. BOINC Manager is set to “English (Canada)” on my systems, but the date & time format it uses does not conform to any Canadian standard I’ve seen, certainly not to that set forth by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA-Z243.4-89), which is based on the International Standards Organization’s (ISO 8601:1988).

(Combining a couple of replies)

When I switch to "Accessible View" from the View menu, I do, in fact, get as you stated, the same format on both panels. I always prefer to use "Grid View" with the sortable columns, which then shows the differing formats as I mentioned previously. That, of course, is why you were puzzled by my description of the "short form date display" when I had not specified my use of the "Grid View" option.

All my BOINC clients but one (which I’m seriously considering replacing with an older version anyway, because of other misbehaviour, much less ‘cosmetic’ in nature) are older than the “Grid View”—I guess the older style of layout is the same as the new “Accessible View”.

BOINC Manager main menu Advanced/Options.../Language Selection needed changing from English(U.S.) to English(U.K.). Then quit and restart BOINC Manager.

I’m glad that sorted you out … but I’m afraid it’s no help to me. BOINC Manager is set to “English (Canada)” on my systems, but the date & time format it uses does not conform to any Canadian standard I’ve seen, certainly not to that set forth by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA-Z243.4-89), which is based on the International Standards Organization’s (ISO 8601:1988).

Apparently the sortable grid view was introduced about a year ago and was dropped, only to be reintroduced (by popular demand?) about a month ago.

There was, on a technical page, a message that the numeric format for the month was to be replaced by alphabetic to avoid confusion, but no mention was made of any particular national local identity, and I see no sign of that having happened in the Tasks panel in BOINC M anager 5.10.27.

I switched temporarily to Canadian, English (unspecified) and English (U.S.) localizations, but did not notice any difference from the U.K. version in any other than the U.S. version which had day and month reversed throughout.

As a matter of interest, did you find that the "9/11" publicity was contrary to what Canadians would expect to say. We, in the U.K. use the same "9/11" in the news items, even though it really, according to our normal formatting, would have used "11/9". And does the U.S. version conform to International standards? They seem to be the odd ones out.

Keith

As a matter of interest, did you find that the "9/11" publicity was contrary to what Canadians would expect to say. We, in the U.K. use the same "9/11" in the news items, even though it really, according to our normal formatting, would have used "11/9". And does the U.S. version conform to International standards? They seem to be the odd ones out.

I don’t know the details of the US standards, but it’s my impression that in some fields they officially support standards that are rarely applied in practice. Similarly, although Canada has been officially metric for over thirty years now, the printing industry (in which I work) still uses the US inch-based paper sizes instead of the more sensible European system*; a fair number of petroleum-industry related publications pass through my hands, and they seem to use customary units most of the time as well.

In general the format used for dates in Canada varies sufficiently that we can’t make any assumptions about the meaning of “##/##” out of context, but it’s my impression that institutions favour “day/month(/year)” where they don’t use the official “(year-)month-day”. Our close contact with American media and industry results in frequent adoption of their practices concerning such matters (including spelling). I guess we’re just used to dealing with a muddle …

In handwritten notes my own habit, which I think I picked up from a relative who wrote me letters so dated, is to write e.g. “26x07”.

* Despite the fact that a great many sheet-fed presses are built in Germany or Japan, to metric specifications.

I don’t know the details of the US standards, but it’s my impression that in some fields they officially support standards that are rarely applied in practice. Similarly, although Canada has been officially metric for over thirty years now, the printing industry (in which I work) still uses the US inch-based paper sizes instead of the more sensible European system*; a fair number of petroleum-industry related publications pass through my hands, and they seem to use customary units most of the time as well.

In general the format used for dates in Canada varies sufficiently that we can’t make any assumptions about the meaning of “##/##” out of context, but it’s my impression that institutions favour “day/month(/year)” where they don’t use the official “(year-)month-day”. Our close contact with American media and industry results in frequent adoption of their practices concerning such matters (including spelling). I guess we’re just used to dealing with a muddle …

In handwritten notes my own habit, which I think I picked up from a relative who wrote me letters so dated, is to write e.g. “26x07”.

* Despite the fact that a great many sheet-fed presses are built in Germany or Japan, to metric specifications.

Yes, I must admit, I get annoyed at every so often somehow unintentionally picking up a "US Letter" Page Setup format (often set as default by others on their own computers), and initially wondering why my Word document is suddenly several more pages longer than expected. The old foolscap, legal sizes, etc. were unweildy and the A2, A3, A4, etc. range of sizes are much more convenient, especially when using A4 sheets to produce A5 booklets, as I do frequently.

I agree absolutely with the logic of "year/month/day" conforming with mathematical conventional of digital and decimal numbers, decreasing in significance from left to right, but the only time I go down that path is for a catalogue/database type list including date as YYYYMMDD included as part of a longer reference to facilitate sorting. But I still absolutely prefer day/month/(year), whether it be in text or numerical for general use.

If you want another pet hate of mine, what do you think of the nonsense formatting of 12:00 pm? What a contradiction!

And how often do you hear "Enter your PIN number"? Would they ever stop a moment to think and then say "Enter your personal identification number number"!!

I guess we have exhausted this subject now, but I did want to raise a point on "MacOS error -5000" icon problem, so shall start a new thread later on today resurrecting a reply you made some 6 months ago on this board,

Keith