Systemwide RFC-3339 Dateformat

RFC-3339 date format and its friends

The RFC-3339 standard is available for free in the public and widely used for software. The ISO 8601 standard is very similar, but requires the 'T' between the day and the hours. RFC-3339 allows to use a space or the 'T' respectively.

Comparison of date standards

Example	Allowed in Standard	date command
2023-08-13	RFC-3339, ISO_8601	user $date --rfc-3339='date'
2023-08-13T16:07:54+02:00	RFC-3339, ISO_8601	user $date --iso-8601='seconds'
2023-08-13 16:08:44+02:00	RFC-3339	user $date --rfc-3339='seconds'
2023-08-13 16:08:44 +02:00	RFC-3339	user $date "+%F %T %:z"
2023-08-13 16:08:44	-	user $date "+%F %T"

• stackoverflow: What's the difference between ISO 8601 and RFC 3339 Date Formats?
• comparison between RFC 3339 and ISO 8601 https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/

System wide RFC-3339 date

Several configuration files need adjustments to achieve a system wide RFC-3339 date representation. Here we focus on the representation with space instead of 'T'.

.profile

FILE ~/.profile.profile

# Localization 
TIME_STYLE=long-iso #for ISO Date in ls"

zsh

FILE ~/.zshrc.zshrc

# Localization 
TIME_STYLE=long-iso #for ISO Date in ls"

xfce panel clock

FILE .config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xmlxfce panel clock with T

<property name="digital-format" type="string" value="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M %:z"/>
<property name="digital-time-format" type="string" value="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M %:z"/>

FILE .config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xmlxfce panel clock with space

<property name="digital-format" type="string" value="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %:z"/>
<property name="digital-time-format" type="string" value="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M %:z"/>