Sometimes the world map in the time and date applet seems unnecssary

Hello

Interesting type of question but why would you want time zones instead of the actual cities within that time zone? Having a look at the image you provided means very little to some one who needs to know what a certain time is for a certain country and that i think is the reason why there is a map. However, if you are like a few people who like having meaningless times with no specific reference to a country then i guess its ok. (no offense meant)

Also i think the map is there so that the dots of where you have picked are shown for reference so that one can get accustom to other country time zones. I like the blue house which shows where i am in reference to the others :)

To drive the question back to yourself:

Of the 5 time zones you have in your image 4 of them are for a certain country (1 is for your own). But do you know which one is for which country if you have an empty map without little dots. Hence the map is provided with little dots so that you can reference them to yourself. In addition, the night and day band shows how close you are in relation to yourself and the dot that is about to enter the day part and the dot that is about to leave the day part and enter the night part (hope i explained this clearly) ie what im trying to say is that the day and night band tells a user when a country is close to leaving the night band and entering the day band without having to do calculations of time but by visual inspection rather.

:)

Hi :)

I thought this was interesting too. It would be nice if there was a way of minimising the map but keeping the clocks.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Replying to some of Nolan's questions and comments...

"why would you want time zones instead of the actual cities within that time zone?"

Because the cities are irrelevant to me and I require only the time in that region.

"Also i think the map is there so that the dots of where you have picked are shown for reference so that one can get accustom to other country time zones. I like the blue house which shows where i am in reference to the others :)"

That's true; but where are the dots when I choose only the time zone?

"Of the 5 time zones you have in your image 4 of them are for a certain country (1 is for your own). But do you know which one is for which country if you have an empty map without little dots. Hence the map is provided with little dots so that you can reference them to yourself."

No. Actually, all the five are time zones beyond my region -- mine is displayed in the panel itself. And yes, I know which is which because I chose them and an abbreviation is shown beside each entry. [If I had the option to format the text, the following sentence would be in bold.] I understand why a map is provided when locations are set, but I don't see the point of an empty map uselessly occupying space.

I second Tom's suggestion of having an option to minimize or hide the map (perhaps automatically) when it doesn't serve its purpose.

Hi :)

Thanks :)

I think that it would be really great if we could add time-zone lines to the map, perhaps 3hours apart from each other since the map is so small. There probably is a way to do all the suggestions from the command-line or by making a program/package to do it. There might even be a package already written. However, i wouldn't even know what to begin searching for in Synaptic Package Manager! Both it's search tools search in package descriptions as well as titles but even so i can't really think of a ew appropriate key words.

There used to be some sort of taskbar/panel applet that had a map on it but i can't remember how configurable it was. Please try right-click on the top taskbar/panel and "Add to panel" to see if there is anything relevant in the list.

Now that a few suggestions and thoughts have been written it might be worth usign the 2nd option in this link
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Signpost
to write this as a "Brainstorming" idea with options for people to vote on.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Good idea to put it up on Brain Storm. Thanks, Tom.

Hi :)

Please post the link to your BrainStorm idea in here so people reading this thread can try to vote on it :)

Thanks & regards from
Tom :)

I was about to do just that.

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/24467/

Hi :)

Ok, it's always easier to correct other people than to write something. At least that's what i find. So, now that i have read it please could you edit the Options to something like

Option1
Default reference locations when no city is selected (e.g. New York (City) for ES/DT, Chicago for CS/DT and Los Angeles for PS/DT.)

Option3
Show the leading edge of the time-zone when no city is selected.

I think that makes sense and gives people options to vote on. I already added Option 2 using copy&paste from your initial Option1 but i could delete it if you would rather reclaim control over this (which might make things easier for you)
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi, Tom. Please feel free to add your ideas, too... it's a site for brainstorming after all.

Hi :)

Thanks, i was just wondering about work-flow as it seems that only the person posting the Option is allowed to edit it. Since it is really early we have chance of making it easy to keep it tidy so i was really thinking of you using copy&paste to add my idea as your own.

Regards from
Tom :)

Hi, i am really quite enjoying working collaboratively on this :) I don't usually work well with people so it makes a nice change :)

Option 3 is looking great but i think the sub-title for it is a bit long. Perhaps "Default dots" would be a quick way of saying it? The description is great & very clear imo :)

Option 1 & Option2 look identical. I am going to change my Option 2. A picture would describe it more easily but would make it difficult for people to ead the idea so they would ignore it and move on to the next suggestion

Could you add a fe words to Option 1 to make it clear that you want to be able to still see the clocks without seeing the map?

Regards from
Tom :)

Tom, "Default dots" seems a bit too brief. And as for Sol. 1, I do not see why someone would read that as saying "hide the clocks." I have mentioned the map and nothing more. But I'll add it, anyway.

Hi :

I think the crucial point is the idea about choosing a default city when no city has been chosen. Does my idea about the time-zone line make sense?

Regards from
Tom :)

A leading time zone line would be ambiguous in the absence of other TZs. Let's imagine that I choose only EST from the US. Now, where does it end? For someone not familiar with the boundaries, that would not be helpful.

Hi :)

Ahhh, i think i need to say that the TimeZone lines run North to South vertically, usually on lines of longitude although one in the pacific goes a little crazy. They run all the way from one pole to the other.

Regards from
Tom :)

I was actually referring to their western limits.

The Brainstorm idea has now been promoted to the "Popular ideas" section. The issue is now open to vote.

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/24467/

Hey congrats :)

I think it's partly because it's such a well written and concise proposal all carefully worked out but mostly because it is such good common-sense and a great idea :)

Congrats and regards from
Tom :)

Thanks, you're kind. But really, is that why it went there? I'm assuming that now that Lucid is out, all pending ideas were brought to the next stage, to be voted upon and implemented in the next release if approved. In fact, I checked the status today after a gap of about 10 days because the new version had come out yesterday.

Ahhh, no i don't think it works like that. There are no guarantees that any of the ideas will be implemented. I think it largely depends on what catches developers imagination or strikes them as something fast & fun to implement. Something i once suggested got implemented with only about 4 people showing even the slightest interest but 1 of them was able to write the patch himself. Actually he took my idea and made it much better than i would have thought of lol

Hi again :)

So my point is that some ideas will have been rejected already by now. Some will presumably still be waiting for approval even if they were proposed before yours. Approval is not automatic and has to be done by someone that may not have enough time to do all the work they want to get done. So, someone has considered and approved your idea and pushed it forwards for people to vote on.

But this has nothing to do with release cycles. Projects that are already being developed have to reach a certain stage at a certain date in order to have any hope of getting into the next release but if they don't achieve that then it either gets in as an update afterwards or goes into the next release.

The Translators Teams got hit by some very critical packages that suddenly had to have some changes rushed through at the last minute but the changes were small enough and critical enough that they got done anyway. I think there were a couple of things that got rejected because the changes were tooo late. At least 1 of them will be in the 10.04.1.

Development doesn't stop after a release but major changes will be directed to the next release. Each project that is part of Ubuntu continues to develop on it's own schedule and an Ubuntu release might carry older versions of a project for various reasons, mostly stability & timing.

I hope this helps?
Regards from
Tom :)

Many thanks for elucidating the process behind Brainstorm.

Hi :)

That's just the way it seems to me. It could be completely different. Anyway, it seems to be going well

Good luck and have fun :)
Regards from
Tom :)