[wp-hackers] post_status = future and pseudo-cron

[Jeff Minard]

Scott Merrill wrote:
> Power users will know how
> to use the system's cron facility, and non-power users are unlikely to
> care about the elegance of any implementation we create.

True, but this isn't for power users, it's for plugin authors. Unless 
we're providing some kind of front end interface for scheduling generic 
events to trigger. And even in those cases, we'd never present anything 
more than:

------------------------------------------
Repeat Every:
  - Hour
  - Day
  - Mon, Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun
  - 1st, 2nd, (etc) of month
------------------------------------------

Which is then up to the author to parse (easily) into a valid format for 
repition.

Plus, it would allow us to create REAL crontab files out of actions, 
should that ever become an option, with little hassle.

As for the precision, perhaps the minutely thing might be a little much 
(mostly cause it's hard to guarantee a hit every single minute of the 
day.) but I would still leave that in with a warning to authors that a * 
rules on the minute option is not likely to work -- it'd still be handy, 
though, for every hour, on the hour "0 * * * *"

Mostly I suggest doing it this way because then there is no confusion 
about how to schedule events -- we can just say "It's exactly like a 
cronjob definition."

Jeff