date and time overlap

Created attachment 2540
Time value is wrapped so it is really hard to read

On a horizontal small panel (18px) the datetime plugin wraps the time value
onto a new line when the format is "Date, then time". This looks weird and
makes it pretty much impossible to read, I would prefer to have both the date
and the time on the same line. Maybe this could be a preference.

See the attached screenshot.

Using 0.6.1 on Ubuntu Jaunty with Xfce 4.6.0.

Mass-reassign all bugs from florian@ to goodies-dev@, thanks for the maintenance work! (and sorry for the bugmail spam..)

I'm thinking about a "Side by side" checkbox in Layout section.
Once this option has been properly setup in preferences dialog, I need to define how to handle this here:
http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-datetime-plugin/tree/panel-plugin/datetime.c?id=6f92135840663b464e4de38b2f6999224344fa79#n608

Currently what happens is:
  Horizontal/deskbar mode:
    Box is vertical
    Label is horizontal
  Vertical mode:
    Box is horizontal
    Label is vertical

If this side-by-side option is turned on, I guess this is what should happen:
  Horizontal/deskbar mode:
    Box is *horizontal*
    Label is horizontal
  Vertical mode:
    Box is horizontal
    Label is vertical

Is that fine?

Fine about:

> Horizontal/deskbar mode:
> Box is *horizontal*
> Label is horizontal

I wonder why the label is ever vertical? Even on a vertical panel it should be horizontal, IMO.

In my vertical panel, I use the clock plugin in the Analog mode because its Digital mode also displays the time vertically which doesn't make any sense to me and is unusable.
Attached is a screenshot showing the Digital mode of the Clock plugin as well as the Datetime plugin in a vertical panel. Both times are hard to read.

Created attachment 5980
Times of Clock(above)/Datetime(below) in a vertical panel

The HIG for panel plugins specify that it should be that way, and most plugins have been following those guidelines now: https://wiki.xfce.org/dev/hig/panel-plugins

I don't say the HIG is wrong, I personally just don't understand why it is preferably in general to have the labels vertically.
There might be valid usecases though.

Of course, displaying the labels vertically is easier as there is always enough space, displaying labels horizontally in a vertical panel is not that easy because the horizontal space is very limited. Still I guess most people can read horizontally more easy than vertically :).

By the way, the sensors plugin displays its labels horizontally and this is fine.

Making this configurable could be an easy solution.

Well, I didn't say the HIG is not not wrong. Personally, I do not use vertical mode exactly because of this, and also because the deskbar mode is much more useful on widescreen monitors anyway. Yet, most plugins have been changed to use vertical labels in vertical mode, so that all look similar. In fact, that was the one valid reason IMO for this change. You may want to discuss this on the mailing list. It is certainly a valid topic for other panel plugins too.

Created attachment 5982
screenshot

I have implemented a preliminary version of this on:
https://github.com/andreldm/xfce4-datetime-plugin/commit/714eff6084a0b91c8395ea53d9a213a27c8048d2

Note that this fork includes the implementation of Bug 9487.

Screenshot attached shows the results. But the on deskbar mode things are messy.
I'll fix this as soon as possible, meanwhile I'd like to hear what you guys think about it.

@André: the horizontal version looks fine to me. Great!

@Harald: you are right. This is sort of off-topic here and we should discuss this rather on the mailing list. I will start a thread about it some time soon.