We recently added a visual indication to absolute time clocks so that it’s easy to find these games in the game list when scanning. Previously, they looked the same as Fischer or Simple time, but the urgency of making a move in absolute time games is dramatically higher.
Three options have come up:
Time/*, by analogy with Canadian time blocks, which say “/3” for 3 moves left in the time block. /* means “for all moves”.
Time+0, by analogy with byo-yomi (and Fischer time in challenges). +0 means “no time will be added”.
Time ABS, where ABS means “absolute time”. (Note: this potentially triggers more line breaks, causing each game to take up more rows. Also, it would be different in each language.)
I think the “+0” could be confusing too for those unfamiliar with the format, especially as other Fischer timing games in the list don’t display as “+x” in the clock time column.
Yeah. +0 makes more sense to me in something like an open challenge where it’s describing the time control, but in an ongoing game where it’s describing not the time control but the time currently left, I think +0 is inconsistent, so ABS makes a lot more sense to me
I had this thought too, but someone in the other thread pointed out that SD in byo-yomi resets after each move. Absolute time does not. So it’d be a false analogy.
Ok, but as a serious suggestion, maybe it should be a warning icon at the end, that clarifies that it is absolute time with a hover-over tooltip or a modal pop-up, if you click on it.
How many people find “3 Days!” (or some explanation point variant) the best option? It’s too late for me to adjust the poll, but “heart” this message if you prefer it.
I dont think theres huge difference between and (ABS), i feel like both would work perfectly fine for identifying that game has something else than fischer or simple timing. No matter which one is used, i’m sure people will learn the meaning of it soon once they start games with absolute timing ^^
While we’re thinking about this sort of thing, could we also adjust the spacing to make things consistent?
The first two are byo-yomi and don’t have any spaces around the “+”, but a space after the “x”.
The third is Fischer, which has a space after the “+”. (Note: these are unusual parameters that essentially just boils down to simple time of 5m per move).
The fourth is byo-yomi will no main time.
Here are my style suggestions, via examples:
5m +5x30s (byo-yomi)
0 +3x20s (byo-yomi with no main time)
5m +30s up to 10m (Fischer with words)
5m +30s ≤10m (Fischer alternate with Unicode)
10m +5m/10 (Canadian)
10m/25 (Canadian with no main time)
5m/1 (simple)
⚠ 5m ⚠ (absolute)
The time unit suffixes would have to be localized, but otherwise I’ve tried to avoid language specific words, except for the “up to” used for Fischer time. I think that displaying the Unicode symbol ≤ is fairly widely supported, so we could go with that alternate option instead. I actually prefer this Fischer alternate with the ≤ symbol.
The ⚠ symbols for the absolute suggestion are also via a Unicode character, but I’m not sure how widely supported that might be. We could choose something else, or display a small image, or highlight with red.
Note that in my proposal above, I specifically write 0 +... for byo-yomi with no main time, since I wanted to emphasize the absence of main time, while for Canadian timing, I simplify it to just 10m/25, omitting the 0 + prefix. So, another alternative would be to just write something like 3x20s for byo-yomi with no main time.
