EU to US times

[plaindocs]

We've got times of day in a LOT of copy, and often we have to maintain EU and US version, or 12 and 24 hour versions.

We could make a jinja2 / python function along the lines of

>>> print(datetime.strptime('16:00', '%H:%M').time())
16:00:00
>>> print(datetime.strptime('16:00', '%H:%M').strftime("%I:%M %p"))
04:00 PM
>>> 

And then use times like local(16:00) and have it convert or not according to a variable in config. What do you think? Am I over thinking?

[janbrohl]

Is there actually a problem for US readers reading 24h times? I cannot speak for all europeans but we have and understand 12h clocks, too - just the AM/PM "needs" to be translated then.

For reference:
In Germany we usually just say/write "9" or "9 Uhr" = "9 o'clock" not specifying wether its AM od PM at all or we write "9:15" which implies 24h format.

[plaindocs]

It isn't a question of whether US readers can or can't read them , but more a question of presenting the information to them in the way they expect to see it. And 24 hour is definitely stranger to US folks than 12 hour is to European folks.

[ericholscher]

Can't we just do this in Javascript, if needed?

[janbrohl]

Scanning for ISO formatted times and replacing them with localized representations should work if the times are not divided by tags.

[plaindocs]

hmmm, maybe? :-D

[janbrohl]

For me the JS code new Date("1970-01-01 "+"11:00").toLocaleTimeString(); evaluates to "11:00:00". (Date.toLocaleTimeString)
My locale is "de-DE".

Do you get a fitting result for your locale?

[mxsasha]

For me it returned 12 hour time, as my browser language was set to English (United States). Don't know if I ever chose that or it was just the default Firefox came with. After setting English (United Kingdom) I get 24 hour time.

If Firefox uses English (United States) as the default, this is not optimal, because Europeans would by default see 12 hour time.