[dev] Re: [cvs] commit: kronolith/lib Driver.php

[Francois Marier]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 10:04:48AM -0400, John Morrissey wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 11:06:57PM -0400, Chuck Hagenbuch wrote:
> > Whoa, whoa. This is not what that kind of recurrence means. I could see
> > adding a new recurrence type or case for it, but I'm going to revert this
> > patch.
> 
> How so? It seems nonsensical to create an event that recurs only if the
> month has >28 days. I think the case where someone only wants to do
> something on the actual "29th" ... "31st" day of the month is *much* more
> limited than those who mean "end of the month" or "last day of the month."

The only thing that this change removes is the ability to set a
recurrence on:

    1) the 31st of the months that have 31 days
    2) the 30th of each month except February

There might be a small case for (1), but I can't see anybody wanting
to do (2).  I would personally think that even (1) is way too unusual
to even bother supporting it, especially since the rare users who
actually want this recurrence can just ignore it on the months with
less than 31 days. So on a practical point of view, we aren't trading
away very useful features.

Now regarding what the recurrence means, it could go both ways.  Sure
it says "on the same day" so technically the 30th is not the same day
as the 31st.  On the other hand, it also says "recurs every 1 month"
meaning that it should appear every month. I believe most users are
not that precise when they think about it and they expect a monthly
recurrence to recur each month, regardless of the day they set it on.

If you look at Outlook, (not that they necessarily are a reference,
but most people at work are used to their products already), they have
two recurrences: monthly like in Horde, and monthly on the first/last
day of the month.  Despite the second recurrence type, if you use the
first type and set a recurrence on the 31st day, it warns you that it
will occur on the 30th of months that don't have 31 days.

My personal feeling is that this is something we should emulate. The
feedback that the company I work for has received about it from end
users was also going in that direction.  (And like Outlook, we had a
second monthly recurrence but still they weren't using it like they
would technically be supposed to.)

Anyways, I just wanted to add my thoughts to John's.

Francois