Convenience macro for hour-minute-second quantities

[schtandard]

A convenience macro for typesetting time quantities consisting of hours minutes and seconds would be nice, analogous to the \ang macro. For example \hms{3;22;15.3} could output 3 h 22 min 15.3 s, \hms{1.5} 1.5 h and \hms{;15;} 15 min.

[josephwright]

#70?

[schtandard]

Not quite, though they are related. I am asking for a clone of \ang for typesetting time. Basically something equivalent to

\NewDocumentCommand\hms{ O{} m }{%
  \ang[%
    angle-symbol-degree = \hour,
    angle-symbol-minute = \minute,
    angle-symbol-second = \second,
    number-angle-product = \,,
    angle-separator = ~, % Not sure about this setting.
    #1,
    ]{#2}%
}

though I would expect it to use the value of quantity-product instead of a separate number-angle-product, at least by default.

This would almost give what #70 is asking for by way of (the analog of) angle-mode = arc: With that setting \hms{1.5} would give 1 h 30 min (well, I am getting a trailing 0 s, not sure if this is by design). Getting rid of the min with the preceding space could be achieved by tweaking the settings in a somewhat unorthodox way (angle-symbol-degree = \,\hour, angle-symbol-minute = , number-angle-product = ,) which is fine, I think. The format 1:30 h would not quite be possible (the issue being the trailing h).

One could of course go even further and consider an interface for generating arbitrary commands that generate cascading quantities like this, with arbitrary factors between them. This would enable users to create e.g. a command like above but including days as an additional level (\dhms{2;5;13} giving 2 d 5 h 13 min or 2.217 d depending on the settings) or one for other non-decimal units like feet and inches or stones and pounds and the like. This would require much more care and work to design an appropriate interface, though, and I don't know if the use-cases justifies this. Also, most of them would probably arise from not using SI units, which is not really what this package is about, I guess.

[josephwright]

I think this would be a separate sub-module from angles, or perhaps done the same way as products, etc. (core code the same, different interfaces). I guess the main question for me is the document command: I will look to see what \hms is used.

[josephwright]

I don't see \hms in use in TL, so this looks safe.