Changing date format from YYYY-MM-DD to YYYY.MM.DD

Hi Jesse,

I hope this message finds you well. I am making a slightly personal request to format dates differently from using dashes to periods. Is this possible to be implemented as a setting in the preferences? Thanks for the consideration!

For context:

ISO 8601 - Wikipedia

I’m sorry, but I don’t think I want to do this for a few reasons.

First in TaskPaper the date format is part of TaskPaper’s file format. So if it became a preference then it would never be clear what the format a TaskPaper document is using, so scripts, etc wouldn’t have a defined way to handle dates.

Second right now most of my development effort is on Bike. I plan to keep TaskPaper updated with latest OS, but I’m not expecting to add many features or change behavior.

And last I do think I can eventually handle this better in Bike.

TaskPaper is designed to be a plain text app… the file format is the user interface. This has advantages, but also has disadvantages well illustrated by your request… there’s no good way to add preferences for the text content that’s displayed without also breaking the file format.

Bike isn’t designed to be a plain text app. Once dates are added to Bike I expect they will display using your local, and there could be a preference to customize further. In Bike the theory is that things like dates are their own “thing”, not formatted text. And so you would loose the ability to move the text caret into a date and edit the current day… instead you would click date and see calendar.

Unfortunately I don’t have a timeline for adding dates to Bike, but they are on my list. I do expect to get to them eventually.

Edit @complexpoint Just noted that I mixed up Bike and Taskpaper a number of times in the text above. I think I’ve fixed those now… but if you are ever confused by my communication be aware that my fingers and brain are not always well connected :slight_smile: