Follow-up work based on discussion in #1618

[MaxVerevkin]

Adding top lvl comment about follow-up work based on discussion in this PR, might get easily lost from resolved threads

• flags vs format options - Drop hard-coded whitespace and render icon as a placeholder #1618 (comment) (looks like a potential breaking change, 0.30 milestone?)
• hiding short block - Drop hard-coded whitespace and render icon as a placeholder #1618 (comment) (shouldn't be a breaking)
• Improve time block - drop parsing format in the inner loop, maybe add datetime Value with formatter Drop hard-coded whitespace and render icon as a placeholder #1618 (comment)

Originally posted by @arathunku in #1618 (comment)

[ammgws]

#1708

#1709

Breaking into separate issues to track separately.