Subject: 24.0.94; dangerous org manual: parse-time-months and parse-time-weekdays

From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 01:58:42 +0100

Hi,

The org-mode manual under the node "The date/time prompt" tells:

  "[...] The function understands English month and weekday abbreviations.  If
you want to use unabbreviated names and/or other languages, configure
the variables `parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays'."

It doesn't tell how the user can do that.  Even worse,
`parse-time-months' and `parse-time-weekdays' are not defined as user
options and undocumented!

After reading the above section in the org manual, users may replace
the English names with e.g. German ones in their config.  Seems this
is not a good idea, as this user question in gnu.emacs.gnus shows:

http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.gnus/browse_thread/thread/8dde85b5ff3ab454/a02ddb878bfa1eb9

BTW1: maybe a better solution would be to define own variables for
this purpose in org, instead of letting users change variables in
parse-time.el.

BTW2: In my version of parse-time.el, the unabbreviated month and
weekdays are already available.

Michael

In GNU Emacs 24.0.94.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.2.3)
 of 2012-03-12 on zelenka, modified by Debian
 (emacs-snapshot package, version 2:20120312-1)
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11104000
Configured using:
 `configure '--build' 'i486-linux-gnu' '--host' 'i486-linux-gnu'
 '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib'
 '--localstatedir=/var' '--infodir=/usr/share/info'
 '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes'
 '--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs-snapshot:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/24.0.94/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/24.0.94/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp'
 '--without-compress-info' '--with-crt-dir=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/'
 '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=gtk3' '--with-imagemagick=yes'
 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu'
 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -DSITELOAD_PURESIZE_EXTRA=5000 -g -O2''