custom clock format in Gnome 3.6
 

I like gnome, but it seems to be missing some rather basic configuration options. One of these is that there seems to be no way to change the format of the gnome-panel clock. In earlier versions of Gnome 3 the format could be changed by editing a javascript file, as discussed in one of my earlier threads. The link to that thread is below. For 3.6 the clock format has been removed from that file, and was not moved to any of the other files in that directory. Does anyone have any ideas about how I might change it?

It seems silly that it should be necessary to write an extension to do something so basic, but I am considering giving that a shot. I've never written anything in javascript, though, so it has the potential to be a time consuming project for me. Any pointers on writing shell extensions are appreciated, if there is no alternative.

Maybe I'm the only person in the world who wants to be able to do this, but it was relatively easy in Gnome 2 and I'm pretty sure you can do it in Windows as well...

Here is the old thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...format-939981/

Gnome 3 has dconf-editor (replacing the old gconf-editor), although you may not have it installed by default. I assume that it may do the job, although I offer no guarentee: I use Gnome 2.

Thanks for the reply.

dconf-editor's options are too limited. I want the date to use full names instead of abbreviated ones, which was easy to do in Gnome 2 with gconf-editor, if I remember correctly, but can't be done in Gnome 3 with dconf-editor as far as I can tell. All you can do with dconf-editor is switch between 12 hour and 24 hour, show or hide the date, and show or hide seconds. Prior to 3.6 all you had to do was edit a little javascript, but that's no longer an option, for some reason.

I think "Mon Jan 14" looks stupid and is harder to read than "Monday, January 14". It's a prominent part of the interface and I'm used to seeing it a certain way. There's no reason for it to be abbreviated anyway, since 80% of the panel is unused space.

One good reason that this should be an option is that it is standard in some (all?) European countries (Maybe other countries as well?) to write the day before the month instead of after it. Many people who live in such countries would probably prefer to have their clock read "Monday, 14 January 2013, 3:00 PM", but changing the city in your date and time settings to a city in one of those countries doesn't change the clock format to the standard that the country uses. Because it's both a regional thing and a matter of taste, I see it as quite an oversight that you can't change it, if I'm indeed correct that you can't.

I think that sums up Gnome 3! My panel shows "17.07 Tuesday 15 January" and I can toggle between black and white letters (according to the wallpaper) with Super+0 and Super+1. When CentOS stops using Gnome 3, I'll be using Mate.