I understand that reasoning.
Of course, it means that you would have to code one more set of "pickers" with user interface, and presumably handle all of the added complexities of 31.12.1999, 1999/12/31, 12/31/1999, 31 DEC 99, December 31, 1999, etc. Not to mention the appropriate names (and single-character abbreviations) for the days, and names of the months (associating them with various choices of language). And explain that somewhere.
There would be significant complexity to doing that, rather than just reading the registry settings - or just saying "No, that's the only way MA3 works".
I just (quickly) counted 11 applications on my PC that display some form of day/time. I'm personally thankful that I don't have to change each of them.
There could be some advantage to being able to tell 50,000 people "It's Microsoft's fault - go ask them".
Why has this gotten so complicated? The original request (fairly reasonable, IMHO) was "would it be possible for MA3 to
pick up the user's time/calendar settings?" [emphasis added]
There is nothing in that request that implies Jim needs to add an interface to
modify Windows' time/calendar settings, nor is it implied that Jim has to worry about how easy/difficult it is for the average user to navigate those settings. The only issue is,
IF a user has modified those settings, can MA3 reflect those settings? The settings are easy to pick up from the registry key, which should remain unchanged for Win2k - Win7; and if the registry key
isn't there, then MA3 should fall back to 12-hour/Sunday first display
That's not a lot of coding to handle that request, and I don't think that anything else should be read into it.
~Ralph S.