Should time control show days without hours?

[benjito]

Update (3/24): I will use abbreviated units (e.g. “6d 3h”) when I submit the pull request. Thanks for all the input!

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TL;DR Space is critical on mobile. Among other things, I’d like to change “6 days 3 hours” to “6 days”?

Background

I am looking at the player cards on mobile, and I think there is an issue with layout. On mobile, they should look something like this:

• smaller profile pictures
• flag exists in the same vertical space as the profile pic
• concise time
• roughly 120px tall

However, certain times can cause the whole layout to change:

• time control goes to multiple lines
• profile pics got bigger
• Black’s flag went to no-mans-land
• roughly 190px tall - a 58% increase!

The verbose time control also causes layout issues in the game list:

Proposed solutions

• CSS overhaul
  • make Byo yomi time smaller than main time if both are present
  • make profile pictures stay small
  • make flags stay up near the profile pic
• Shorten time control representation

I imagine CSS changes will be relatively inoffensive, since we would mostly just be making things more consistent, but the time control could be more controversial since there would be lost information if we remove the hours, so I’d like to get more feedback before starting to edit code. My reasoning for the proposal is that 3 hours is so small in the context of a week that the additional precision is not worth the space.

What do you think?

• Keep it the same (6 Days 3 Hours)
• Omit hours (6 Days)
• Use decimals (6.1 Days)
• Abbreviated units (6d3h)
• Other (please comment)

[richyfourtytwo]

147 hours.

But all other versions that don’t lose precision are also fine with me.

[yebellz]

Express everything as seconds, but in scientific notation with three significant digits.

5.29e5 sec

[Conrad_Melville]

I don’t think precision matters that far out. When it does matter, closer to the deadline, the system already switches to hours only. At 47 hours, right? Abbreviation is the best solution, I think.

BTW: what does the circle with the number inside mean in the Black player cards? I’ve never seen that before.

[richyfourtytwo]

@Conrad_Melville

closer to the deadline, the system already switches to hours only.

Ah, I didn’t know that. Agreed that hour level precision becomes irelevant at some point. Maybe I’d argue for 72 hours instead of 48, but even if it stays at 48 that’s nothing I would worry about.

[richyfourtytwo]

@Conrad_Melville

what does the circle with the number inside mean in the Black player cards?

Handicap stones.

[Groin]

Perfect for our children users.

[benjito]

OK cool, personally I can convert something like “36 hours” without much mental energy, but would have trouble understanding durations larger than a few days if represented as hours. I definitely will keep the current behavior for times less than 48 hours.

[_KoBa]

I voted “other” as i feel it would be good enough to have only the days there when its more than 2 days. When the timer drops down below 48 hours, then have the hours, and at below 24 hours it only shows the minutes. So basically the current system, but bit less clutter ^___^

[teapoweredrobot]

@benjito

(6d3h)

I like this format, maybe because it’s what I’m used to on Sente App (which also does 10h 48m for example).
I feel it’s useful to know if you are near the full day or about to drop a day - the difference between 3d 23h and 3d 1h). With an 8h increment maybe you’d like to know if you need to make a move or two to keep ahead of a weekend, bank hol, busy period or if you are obviously ok. Half a day might make the difference.

[Samraku]

Yeah, I like having the hours for correspondence games

[trohde]

For me any of these are OK:

︎ 6d 3h
︎ 6 Days 3 Hours

But I def. want the hours.

[_KoBa]

Actually yeah, i guess whatever is displayed, main thing is that its in the same format everywhere.

In open challenges its all abbrivieted pretty neatly as wk/d/h/m, but on game lists theres bit annoying mismatch for “days”, "hours, “d”, “h”

[benjito]

Oh, I was wondering where that was used! I was aware of code that used d/m notation, but never checked where it manifested.

Given that and @teapoweredrobot 's note that it’s also used in the Sente app, this seems like the most consistent change.

[benjito]

Abbreviated days is the clear poll winner, so that makes this an easy decision. Thanks everyone for the input!

[_KoBa]

rolls 6d6

[benjito]

Abbreviated days/hours is in! Looks like we got a couple lines of vertical space back

[fuseki3]

Very nice ! One issue now is that in languages using a different word for “days” not beginning with the letter d, the abbreviation “d” is now inconsistent.

From the French version I see this :

(2d 23h rather than 2j 23h)

Should the “d” and “h” be translateable strings ?

[Samraku]

@fuseki3

Should the “d” and “h” be translateable strings ?

I mean, B and W for colors are translatable, so yeah, seems like they ought be

[benjito]

Yes, those strings are internationalized in the code! Are they not showing up in the translation tool?

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Update: I checked, it is in the tool. I’ll update the French to 2j 23h, but I encourage you to check out translate.online-go.com if you haven’t already! It’s a great way for polyglots to contribute to the site!