Created attachment 9109 clock-digital-formats.diff I think the digital clocks format (Layout=Digital, Clock Options/Format) lacks %H:%M option. The patch adds this option. I know there is "Custom Format", but %H:%M (i.e.: "16:32") seems such a basic option, it should be included among the presets.
I could imagine replacing "%r" with "%R", which is what you're after I guess. I wonder if anyone cares about seconds not being part of the presets, but to be honest it doesn't feel too reasonable.
Yeah, %R is the format I miss in the preset formats. In more length: I do not like the current default, which is to show the date in the clocks all the time. The date occupies valuable space, I do not need to know it that often and when I want to know it (once in a day, usually), I hover the mouse above the clock. IMO the default for the clock should be "08:22 AM" ("%I:%M %p") for locales that use AM/PM (US locale) and "08:22" (%R) otherwise (cs_CZ). Actually - looking now at https://developer.gnome.org/glib/stable/glib-GDateTime.html#g-date-time-format - the leading zero can be removed with an underscore _ and it looks the best without the leading zero (that is what I have on my phone too). So the format I (being from the Czech republic) now prefer the most (and I think it should be default) is "%_H:%M". For countries that use AM/PM, the default format should imo be "%_I:%M %p".
Created attachment 9112 digital-24h-without-leading-zeros.p This is the change I would prefer now.
In XFCE 4.12, the 24h format without the date was the default and the first option in clock options/format. Perhaps this changed with the move to gtk3, since I do not see any change on the corresponding line https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/blame/plugins/clock/clock.c#n180
Created attachment 9138 clocks and clock options in XFCE 4.12
Created attachment 9139 clocks and clock options in XFCE 4.12 better screenshot with en_US locale
It has nothing to do with gtk3, it was just changed recently https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/commit?id=2c69eeb88871829d165b480d8ad9b6a704e09568 bug 15456 Well I miss the old default. Display time as "%R" always, date only on mouseover. (and "%_H:%M" i.e. without the leading zero is even better)
Simon Steinbeiss referenced this bugreport in commit e8c6fc408d0c0e750420633c8424498c9439cc17 clock: Add back hour:min to format presets (Bug #16035) https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/commit?id=e8c6fc408d0c0e750420633c8424498c9439cc17
The default layout was updated for a reason, but I added the %R back in your amended version, with %_H. Distributions can modify these upstream values anyway (e.g. Xubuntu has had a different default layout for many years) and it should be easy enough to switch to another layout.
Thank you!