Re: [PATCH 2/2] --date=relative falls back to "short" format for commits older than a year

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

I thought about that, but I wanted to keep the maximum size down for
column output (like in git-blame). Which is why I bumped the "use
months" limit to 24 months instead of 12.

And that limit can also be tweaked.  Surely at some point there is a
range where you no longer care about the months and "N years" has high
enough resolution. But there is also a point where "N months" gets
cumbersome (75 months is a more annoying than "around 6 years"). The
question is whether we reach the "cumbersome" point before we reach the
"don't care about months" point.

Yes, "75 months" is unacceptable.  I suspect people's mind would not work
well with anything larger than 60 months.  I've actually thought about
"don't care about months" point, but 12 months is a long time.  You
certainly remember there still was a noticeable maturity difference
between classmates who were born in the earliest months of the school year
and in the last months before graduating grade school.  Perhaps after 20
years.

Another option would to give higher resolution in number of years, like
"3.5 years" or even "3.1 years".

But I do not think people think of years in terms of decimal fraction.