Subject: Re: bug#40137: 25.1; ERC ignore function should allow specifying a limited duration

From: Amin Bandali <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2020 14:16:04 -0400

Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

> Amin Bandali <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>>> Anyway, if this were to be implemented, in what format would the
>>> timeout be queried for?  Perhaps hours?
>>
>> Irssi seems to use seconds [0].  But I think minutes would be a nice
>> compromise between seconds and hours.  Though, ideally, we'd be able to
>> parse relative time strings like "+1h", "+3d", "+2w", and so on.
>>
>> [0]: <https://irssi.org/documentation/help/ignore/>
>>
>> Do you know if Emacs has functions for parsing such time formats outside
>> Org?  This seems like one of many situations they would come in handy.
>
> Yeah, that would be handy...  I think.  Or perhaps not -- asking people
> to learn a new "language" to just set a timeout is perhaps not ideal...
>

Would it really be that big of a burden?  I'd imagine 10m, 2h, ...  to
be familiar/intuitive enough for most users, especially those with an
Org background.  Further, to alleviate this, we would set a default unit
for when none is provided (e.g. take 10 to mean 10m).

>
> Anyway, I think hours would make sense -- it's a human-scale unit.  If
> people want a quarter hour, they can just say 0.15.  Inputting seconds
> sounds kinda ... excessively precise. 

Agreed on seconds being excessive, but I would probably prefer minutes
over hours.

Anyhow, if anyone knows functions for parsing relative dates/times, I'd
appreciate it if you could point them out to me.