Business 'fancy date format'

[Geert Janssens]

On Wednesday 09 November 2016 06:50:16 John Ralls wrote:
> > On Nov 9, 2016, at 2:17 AM, Robert Fewell <14ubobit at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > John,
> > 
> > Yes this is master and the reports have been changed. On maint there
> > is an option for 'Fancy Date Format' and the default is what I
> > stated above so your date will be correct.
> > 
> > So to me it looks like the following...
> > 
> > The File/Properties/Business should be showing 'Locale' as the
> > default and remove 'UTC' from the list. (it is not on the list in
> > Preferences/Date) (gnc-default-strftime-date-format) should return
> > a format based on 'Locale' These reports should test for a valid
> > 'Fancy Date Format', if not, use the default one.
> > 
> > If you agree I will add it to my pull request dealing with the
> > report changes.
> Bob,
> 
> Saying that the reports had changed got me to look at history, which
> reminded me that on maint the Fancy Date setting doesn't actually
> work and that Geert fixed it in master last year. I think his idea
> was that the user might want to have reports dated in UTC instead of
> the local time-zone, but I don't remember the reasoning. Perhaps he
> does. Until he chimes in let's leave it on the list.
> 
Just for kicks I tried to trace the UTC definition back in our code base. I lost the trail in the 
gnome2 merge in 2005. So it's been around for a while.

The definition of this date format can presently be found in 
https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/master/src/libqof/qof/gnc-date.h#L109

And a bit later in the enum there is an example:
2004-12-12T23:39:11Z

It's the only of all the date formats that includes a time. All others are date only. I have no idea 
why this was added unfortunately. And given we are considering removing all time 
information from gnucash, I wonder if it's even useful to keep around for much longer.

Regards,

Geert