Menu Bar Clock Format?

Hello Tom:

I looked around and can find no setting to force the 24 hour leading zero format. The application truncates what it apparently considers a non-significant zero.

You might want to put that in as a suggestion to Apple for a future release enhancement.

Barry

If you go to System Preferences-> Date and Time, you can set the clock to a 24 hour clock, which will give the leading zero. However this will remove the AM/PM, as they become redundant.

I don't know a way to keep both settings, though manually editing the setting file might work.

As you noted, AM/PM is unnecessary for a 24-hour clock.

Look at: System Preferences -> Language & Text -> Formats

Will that do what you want?

Or, if you get fed up with the menu bar clock, you could try this:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33388

.. and, there is a way to set up custom configuration files in Terminal. The most recent article I can find is from 2001. I would expect that to be out of date.

Post your question in the Unix forum at http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735

One of the Terminal/Unix gurus will be able to assist.

I know what you're saying. OS 10.6 is actually going backwards on this issue. On my 10.4 laptop, I can have the menu clock be what my simple/normal? time format is. On my 10.6 machine, this trick doesn't work. Apple made the clock feature simpler, but less customizable. What really frustrates me is that when I open Date & Time in 10.6 to change settings on the clock, there is a link to Language & Text (International in 10.4). This doesn't do anything however. So if I am Jewish, Chinese, or Muslim, I am forced by Apple to use the Georgian calendar.

I just installed MagiCal for Mac and that worked ok. It replaces the menu clock and is really customizable.