How do you display time of day in dates only if it is specified?

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#1

I find it a bit hard to parse dates such as “in four days” (because I prefer to have displayed what day of the week that is), so I turned on a custom date display option.

However, I’ve only figured out how to either:

  • always display a time of day for every date, including 12:00am by default when no time is specified
  • never display a time of day, even when it’s specified

The default setting displays time of day, but only when it’s explicitly specified, so this must be possible. How can I do it as a custom setting? I took a look at the documentation, but didn’t see how to accomplish this with the “tokens” I read about.

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#2

I have to admit that it’s not doable with the token string, as you mentioned.

It would be hard even if we offer an option called “Only show time when it’s available”, since we’ll need to parse your custom format. For example, if your format is dddd, MMMM Do YYYY, h:mm:ss a, Dynalist need to understand that h:mm:ss a is the time part and should be removed if there’s no time.

The easiest would be just to have two fields, one for the full format (when there’s time), and another for the day format (when there’s no time).

#3

I see. I would definitely use both fields if they existed!

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#4

Since other programs can manage to show times only when they exist:

image

(from Moo.do), I think Dynalist is just constrained by programming choices it made early on. For whatever reason, when Dynalist was being developed, dates were not envisioned as integral to its ultimate purpose. But it’s evolved in a multitude of ways, and now dates are essential. I continue to believe (like a good one-man band) that dates need to be re-thought from the ground up for Dynalist to keep up with its competitors.

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#5

I simply must say I really would like to see this too :smile: