Setting the time on the calendar pop-up

I’m just starting to use the calendar pop-up to enable end users to set dates.

  1. Is there a way to enable editing of the time as well as the date on the calendar? I’m sure it’s there, but just can’t find it. A clickable clock interface would be excellent, but could live with text editing.

  2. Is there an option for hiding the time on the calendar?

  3. Can the calendar set just the date and leave the time blank or set it to midnight?

Searching this forum and the docs, I’m coming up dry on this one.

Kind regards,

Just what I have on my mind without trying:

  1. As soon as you show the time portion in the field using a mask like dd.MM.yyyy hh:mm you get a little time entry field in the middle top of the calendar dialog (hard to find)

  2. Is just the opposite to 1

  3. I think you can also solve this using a mask… Or Servoy doesn’t even write a time portion to the database if you don’t show it, not sure about this one…

Patrick

patrick:

  1. As soon as you show the time portion in the field using a mask like dd.MM.yyyy hh:mm you get a little time entry field in the middle top of the calendar dialog (hard to find)

I’m using a mask of “ddMMMMyyyy h:mm a”. If the date field was empty then the calendar comes up without a time portion. After choosing a date the field is filled with both date and time (current time).

Now if I call up the calendar pop-up again the time appears as well as the date at the top of the pop-up. But the time can’t be edited.

Am I correct, there’s no way to edit time on the calendar? Only by text editing the date field itself? That can’t be right!

Very confusing. Not documented as far as I’ve been able to discover. I greatly wish Servoy would get proper indexing for their documentation. Right now it’s a joke. Sorry, had to vent on that one. A major, major, major annoyance and great time waster.

patrick:
2. Is just the opposite to 1

In other words, it all depends on the mask.

I’m still left wondering how end users are expected to edit time.

Kind regards,

Try this format ddMMMMyyyy hh:mm
Yours isn’t working and is probably a bug.

Come’n Morley. You should give Marc Norman some credit for editing the manuals. Please keep in mind that some features are still beta as you work with them.
Servoy deliberately has choosen to come up with beta’s at a high pace.
Upside: Features are implemented fast. Developers do have an influence on how our product evolves. Bugs are traced more rapidly when lot’s of developers work with the product.
Downside: You’ll bump into an occasional bug. It’s very hard to keep the manuals in sync with the beta’s. (That’s why this forum has become so important)

In the end we think this way is better then locking ourselves up and releasing a “perfect” update + manual every two years.
(which will have bugs anyway as I’ve experienced with other software)

Meantime I’ll report this as a bug and see how we can optimize the syncing of manuals with latest Servoy.

In the end we think this way is better then locking ourselves up and releasing a “perfect” update + manual every two years.

I totally agree. The manuals were not the problem with whatever product we all worked before. We don’t want Servoy to become like any other software coloss…

morley
why do you only have one ‘h’?

ddMMMMyyyy h:mm a

why not

ddMMMMyyyy hh:mm a

Currently that is the problem why you don’t get a time edit portion.

Also who can give me a nice screen/photoshop dump how the calendar should look like with the time portion enabled?

Morley:
Very confusing. Not documented as far as I’ve been able to discover. I greatly wish Servoy would get proper indexing for their documentation. Right now it’s a joke. Sorry, had to vent on that one. A major, major, major annoyance and great time waster.

Morley,

It is not realistic to expect:

a) Every single thing you’re confused on to be in the documentation;

b) Every single possible permutation of every possible method or circumstance you come across while developing your solution to be documented;

c) That the doc team can read your mind on how you think about items - and then index it that way

Our documentation is a REFERENCE guide - NOT a training manual. If you have a better index - please email it to me at bcusick@servoy.com and I will pass it on to the documentation people.

Sorry… I just had to vent on that one.

bcusick:
It is not realistic to expect:

a) Every single thing you’re confused on to be in the documentation;

b) Every single possible permutation of every possible method or circumstance you come across while developing your solution to be documented;

c) That the doc team can read your mind on how you think about items - and then index it that way

Our documentation is a REFERENCE guide - NOT a training manual. If you have a better index - please email it to me at bcusick@servoy.com and I will pass it on to the documentation people.

Sorry… I just had to vent on that one.

With great respect I must vent right back. That’s an extreme and defensive statement, NOT one I hold. Documentation is not tutorials and should not be.

My comments have to do with indexing. In each of Servoy’s manuals the index amounts to just a few pages. Good documentation has extensive cross referencing of all major terms. For reference I point to O’Reilly’s JavaScript, the definitive guide with more than 70 pages to its index clearly organized with great energy and care.

“Calendar” does not appear in either of Servoy’s developer manual indexes. Likewise many other significant terms. They’re just not there. If you like I’ll start a list of what’s not there.

For access Servoy’s documentation primarily relies on the table of contents. To be effective, documentation should have access from a number of directions. Indexes are particularly useful when the user is looking for a term which may turn up in a number of different places and contexts and/or the user is not yet familiar with how the material is organized. Indexes, good ones, are not an after thought. I repeat, in more polite language, Servoy’s indexing is inadequate to efficient use of its documentation. This man’s experience and opinion.

So as to ward off flame wars, I should say I like everything about Servoy and the Servoy team with the sole exception of documentation. I feel liberated by Servoy and am immensely proud of what I’ve been able to achieve using Servoy over the past six months. That’s a testament to the clarity of thought that’s gone into the creation of Servoy, not to my stumbling efforts. Servoy is very important to me, sufficiently important to point out a glaring (IMHO) weakness.

Servoy’s hundreds of pages of documentation should be easily searchable, which in its present condition, for whatever reason, it is not.

Kind regards,

Ok point taken Morley.

We don’t have any problem with negative remarks about Servoy.
They remain uncensured because we want this forum to reflect the truth about Servoy.
Besides, criticism inspires us to deliver a better product.

However, please try to stay polite.
I know how frustating it can be when a manual doesn’t help you out,
but I always count till 10 before writing down a burst of anger
(takes away the rough edges) :wink:

Thanks

Morley,

Why don’t you just open up the PDF documentation - and search by anything you want?

In the ServoyReferenceGuild2_1.pdf - the term “calendar” comes up with 7 hits - and describes the exact syntax to use.

Perhaps this would help.

Morley:

bcusick:
It is not realistic to expect:

a) Every single thing you’re confused on to be in the documentation;

b) Every single possible permutation of every possible method or circumstance you come across while developing your solution to be documented;

c) That the doc team can read your mind on how you think about items - and then index it that way

Our documentation is a REFERENCE guide - NOT a training manual. If you have a better index - please email it to me at bcusick@servoy.com and I will pass it on to the documentation people.

Sorry… I just had to vent on that one.

With great respect I must vent right back. That’s an extreme and defensive statement, NOT one I hold. Documentation is not tutorials and should not be.

My comments have to do with indexing. In each of Servoy’s manuals the index amounts to just a few pages. Good documentation has extensive cross referencing of all major terms. For reference I point to O’Reilly’s JavaScript, the definitive guide with more than 70 pages to its index clearly organized with great energy and care.

“Calendar” does not appear in either of Servoy’s developer manual indexes. Likewise many other significant terms. They’re just not there. If you like I’ll start a list of what’s not there.

For access Servoy’s documentation primarily relies on the table of contents. To be effective, documentation should have access from a number of directions. Indexes are particularly useful when the user is looking for a term which may turn up in a number of different places and contexts and/or the user is not yet familiar with how the material is organized. Indexes, good ones, are not an after thought. I repeat, in more polite language, Servoy’s indexing is inadequate to efficient use of its documentation. This man’s experience and opinion.

So as to ward off flame wars, I should say I like everything about Servoy and the Servoy team with the sole exception of documentation. I feel liberated by Servoy and am immensely proud of what I’ve been able to achieve using Servoy over the past six months. That’s a testament to the clarity of thought that’s gone into the creation of Servoy, not to my stumbling efforts. Servoy is very important to me, sufficiently important to point out a glaring (IMHO) weakness.

Servoy’s hundreds of pages of documentation should be easily searchable, which in its present condition, for whatever reason, it is not.

Kind regards,

Morley,

Your points about Servoy documentation are well taken. While your
frustrations with the limitations of Servoy documentation may be shared,
general venting does not help to improve the quality of that information.

However, to clarify some of the issues that you raised:

  • Indexing, to the degree (as in number of cross-references and pages)
    that you mention in your post, requires hundreds of hours (in some cases,
    thousands of hours). While we are certainly interested in providing a
    useful indexing scheme in the Servoy books, the priority for the time
    spent producing these books is making sure that the hundreds of
    screenshots, descriptions and examples for all the features and
    functionality that Servoy includes are constantly updated based on
    released Servoy versions.

  • Indexing for commercially available books such as the one that you
    mentioned in your post are separately funded - in many cases, the
    publisher requires the author to pay for the cost of indexing. For Servoy,
    this would mean that if there are developers that wish to financially
    contribute so that more complete indexing moves up the feature request
    list, we will be happy to consider those requests.

  • The tools that are used to produce Servoy’s documentation are
    single-source. The advantage of using such tools is that we can
    simultaneously develop the same information for the online Servoy Help
    Navigator for all of Servoy’s product line, as well as the printed Servoy
    books and corresponding pdf files.

Much of the printed documentation that is currently available for software
applications today cuts way back on content and instead heavily refers
(and in certain cases, forces) the reader to use an online help system.

The disadvantage is that unlike a program such as MS Word, where you
can specify any word or phrase as an indexed item, these tools index
topics (rather than single words or paragraphs) by default - this being the
reason that there is a great deal of similarity between the topics in the
Table of Contents and the items listed in the Index of Servoy books..
All other instances of index items must be manually entered and manually
referenced to relevant topics - one at a time.

  • With regard to finding information about “calendar”:
    We appreciate your suggestion to include “calendar” as an index item in
    the printed Servoy books, and will update the next version of
    documentation accordingly.

  • While it is true that there is no index item in the printed Servoy books,
    and it is also true that there is no index item that can be found in the
    Servoy Help Navigator, you CAN select the “Search” tab in the online
    Servoy Help Navigator and enter “calendar”. This will show two topics that
    include the term and/or function related to calendar.

Once you have opened the desired topic (double-click on the topic from
the topics list at the bottom of the “Search” tab), choose Tools>Find and
enter “calendar” in the “Find What” criteria to highlight the first instance of
“calendar” in the opened topic. Press the “Find Next” button to search for
and highlight each additional instance of the word “calendar” in the
opened topic.

It is our intent to provide documentation as a useful tool in the process of
developing Servoy solutions and applications.

If you have one or more specific items that you feel would be beneficial to
include in one or more of the Servoy book indexes, you are welcome to
email me directly at mnorman@servoy.com with the index items and the
Servoy book that the index items apply to.


Marc Norman
Servoy

On entering time in the calendar I have my field formatted as:
MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm a

When you click the calendar pop-up and enter say 17:00 for the time, the field will display 5:00 PM.

If you click again on the calendar pop-up the time will read 05:00. Clicking OK will set the time to 05:00 AM - which kinda makes sense programatically, but not from a user interface standpoint. If I entered 17:00 in the time area then when I click the calendar it should read 17:00 (or have an AM/PM designator).

I would consider this a bug, but since I am new to Servoy, I am giving it the benefit of doubt in that I may be missing something.

Is this a bug or is it something with my field formatting?