I just got an interesting reply from Mr. Louis Visser <Louis.Visser@nni.nl> on my question whether there is any work going on to revise ISO 8601 soon: ISO TC 154 decided in 1996 to revise ISO 8601. Four member bodies responded to the calls for participation in the WG preparing the revision: Sweden, Austria, Yugoslavia and the Netherlands. I am coordinating the work of the WG. A first proposal for the revision has been prepared late 1996; a second proposal is expected in a month time. Please take your copy of ISO 8601 and think about what you would like to see changed in the next revision of ISO 8601. Some topics I could think of that might be addressed in a revision are: - the "ugly T" (allow a space alternatively) - profiles for easy reference in other standards (which ones?) - BNF syntax description - replace many of the ---DD style notations by shorter ones - allow second 60 (leap second) - decimal fraction of a day (1997-100.5 is noon) - third sunday of February 1997 as 1997-02-3-7 ??? - years < 0001 and > 9999 (suggestions?) - add (modified) julian date notation - calendar indicator? - time zone rule descriptors? - sliding window interpretation of YY (Y2K)? - ... [I don't think each of them is a good idea, this list is just intended as a brain storming trigger to keep you thinking about alternatives.] May be, I'll start a Web page collecting ideas for improving ISO 8601. I hope, I can organize a copy of the existing revision proposal and make it somehow available online. I'd love to hear about any suggestions that you might have! Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue University, Indiana, USA -- email: kuhn@cs.purdue.edu