The default formatting for timestamps should be yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss (similar to ISO-8601). Unfortunately ISO-8601 uses colons as separators between hours, minutes and seconds. File names with colons cause problems in other operating system environments and should therefore be avoided and users should not see such examples when dealing with file dates as this would mislead them to using such formats in file names. In order to popularize usage of date formatting which makes it more logically sortable (contrary to dd.mm.yyyy or m/d/yyyy), the timestamps should appear in yyyy-mm-dd ordering. Thunar already has a configurable option yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss (the last one of the offered formatting options). Unfortunately this one is not the default one but rather the today/yesterday/day of the week option, which is the least meaningful one on a computer. Even letting the currently last one from the configuration menu become the standard default would be a great improvement!
(In reply to Adalbert.Hanssen from comment #0) > The default formatting for timestamps should be yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss (similar > to ISO-8601). Sorry, but I personally dislike that format , so dont count on me with that one :) > In order to popularize usage of date formatting which makes it more > logically sortable (contrary to dd.mm.yyyy or m/d/yyyy), the timestamps > should appear in yyyy-mm-dd ordering. I dont want to imply any further-use, scenarios, or to educate users regardding possible future scenarios .. so imo thats not an argument > Thunar already has a configurable option yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss (the last one > of the offered formatting options). Unfortunately this one is not the > default one but rather the today/yesterday/day of the week option, which is > the least meaningful one on a computer. While I personally use "%d.%m.%Y - %H:%M:%S", I can imagine that there are many people out there which like to have "yesterday" and so on ... I simply dont want to make a decision on that, for as long as it is not clear what is the mostly adopted format.
Many numerical date forms can create confusion when used in international correspondence, particularly when abbreviating the year to its final two digits, with no context. The US notation and the French one both use slashes as separators. Therefore American and French dates are prone to be misunderstood! In most parts of the world (including the United Nations and all Patent offices) the "little endian" (day leftmost, year right most) format is customary as it is in many languages. Most international users apply a dot as separator, unfortunately the French use a slash for that. Unfortunately little endian date formats don't sort easily if expressend in textual form. ISO and some countries (standard in East Asia, Iran, Lithuania, Hungary, and Sweden; and some other countries to a limited extent) use "big endian format" where the year is leftmost. If there is a separator, a minus sign is used for it. Such a date is easily recognized by this formatting (although in ISO there is alos a reduced form without dashes). If the separators are used consistently and if the number of digits for the day is not degenerated to a single one this format is the one where lexical order is the logical order. Only in US and Canadian non-government use the M/D/YY-format is customary (the British stopped to do so around the middle of last century, Canada is in the transit from American date towards ISO notation). In the US the slash is customary as separator. In France little endian is used with slashes: they will locate 9/11/06 (for a German 9.11.06) on 2006-11-09, whereas an American reader would locate it on 2006-09-11! By the way, this site uses ISO-Formatting of time stamps to be unambiguously understood all around the world! Some Unixers however express dates in the discordian notation - well understood only among conspirators. I don't think it would be difficult to make Thunar's fourth choice the default one such that dates shown in Thunar on a system from a live stick or on a freshly installed system will be understood by everyone!