Journal format

[xairbusdriver]

Stu,
I'm most likely the only one interested in this subject, and I'm absolutely not asking for any changes. Ever since the Apple ][ gained the ability to handle a video card (allowed 80 character lines of text/graphics and real descenders on g, j, p, q, and y!!!! ), I've been obsessed with typography. Thus, the use of inch marks for double-quotation marks has always made me wonder about the professionalism of a publisher/author. I usually assumed they just used Windows...  

One result of this fanaticism has been my manual entry of Journal entries. I'd rather use a 12-hour clock with "am"/"pm"; for example. I've been able to insert some basic html and css in the xml file, even in the Journal Editor, but I've not been able to insert any of the normal html/xml methods of inserting "smart/curly" quotes. Mid-South Weather/Journal page

I think my problem may be that the journal.xml file is an Apple plist document (and I'm too lazy to look up the rules for it ). Whatever the reason, I'd just like to know that you won't be changing that format without some warning for me (not being selfish, I just doubt if anyone else cares! ). I suspect any change you make there will be compensated for in the WC app so that no one else will even see anything differently.

So, any plans on changing that Doctype?

[WCDev]

DON'T DO IT!!!!!! 

The best advice is not to hand modify any WeatherCat file unless it's documented, either in the manual or in the file itself. The reason for this, as your rightly point out, is that occasionally the file format and/or data needs to be updated/changed. An example from recent memory is the data for the current conditions calculator. When this happens I make assumptions that the file you have is the same as the one I shipped and the data it contains is just what it should contain so that it can be converted to the new format/structure as necessary. If it isn't, bad things can happen

With regards to the time format in a journal entry - it'll follow the format you've set in WeatherCat. So if your time format is set to 12 hour, you'll get a 12 hour time format and vice versa. If however, in your case you want 24 hour formatting for WeatherCat in general, but 12 hour formatting for journal entries, then that'd be a feature request?

Some HTML can be used in a journal entry (manual page 60) - it won't be rendered in the Journal when editing, but will when posted to the web - curly quotes - you may need to go to hand coded values to get what you want - I've never tried it. I don't think it'll translate them for you.

[xairbusdriver]

DON'T DO IT!!!!!!

I did notice that the Journal Editor was missing a couple of my last hand-coded entries. Added them with the Editor (Retrospective Entry) and then edited the time in the Journal.xml file. Apparently, the Journal.xml file is written to by the Journal Editor, but it is not read from. The times showing in the Editor for those Retrospective entries still show as "20:08" rather than the "8:08 pm" in the Journal.xml file. WC handles my edits just fine, displaying them as I wish in the html, except for the "smart/curly" quotes. I've tried html entities (“), hex (“), and decimal (“) values, but none work. I just assumed it has something to do with the Doctype definition. No problem.

I do have "12 Hr" set in the Prefs->Units/Misc 1 page. Don't see any other place to set that. There are places where WC displays a time (anywhere the TIME$ tag appears, I assume) and it does use the 12 hr format. However, it still uses "AM/PM" rather than "am/pm". I think that part is probably hard-coded.

I will refrain from any more editing of the Journal.xml file. May even delete it. I will create a Journal page differently to avoid creating problems with matching data files in the future.

Thanks!

[xairbusdriver]

DON'T DO IT!!!!!!

Rest easy Stu, I'll not be touching the Journal xml files any more. I've modified an address book web site (in a programming course I took recently) to use as my new Journal display. The "theme " is different than the rest of my site, but I may leave it as it is since it's mostly a page for myself. I don't think I've looked at many Journals in others sites and I doubt many have looked at mine.

Because it is a "third-party" set up, I used it as a learning exercise for PHP and SQL. Visitors can view and sort the <display>, but a login is required to edit, delete or add an entry. It was a fun project!