Cologinan complications.

Fragment of a discussion from Talk:LocalTime

These expressions only accept numbers (optionally with decimals).

The places where this can be used are for user input (how long block lasts/when the block ends). Currently it is not flexible enough for more complex expressions like This page was last modified XXX ago. I would think that if we ever get into that far we have a magic word like {{RELATIME:$1|duration|context?}}.

For user input the level of fuzziness or rounding is not so important as for production. If you have ideas how to tackle these issues I'd glad to hear the.

So we have at least the following issues:

  1. combined magnitudes
  2. approximations
  3. tailoring of magnitudes per language (like, avoid decades, prefer years)
  4. choosing from multiple possible alternatives by providing some context
  5. some expressions like yesterday have additional semantics (very approximate, but day must be different)
    Realistically. if there is some kind of algorithm choosing which magnitude to take, it considers the absolute difference instead of the fact that century might just have changed.
Nike19:11, 9 March 2011