Well, that turns out not to be the case.
You are saying that if I generated a series of dates, one per year, going back 100 years, that the format would change in the middle? If my spreadsheet did that, I'd figure it was a bug -- *not* a feature. Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com ► शिष्यादिच्छेत्पराजयम् ◄ ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Cowan" <cowan@ccil.org> To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com> Cc: <tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov> Sent: Sun, 2004 Jun 13 20:05 Subject: Re: Time Zone Localizations
Mark Davis scripsit:
When I generate a date right now, and the date happens to be in the past at some time, I don't generate it with the conventions that would have applied in *on that date* (unless I am doing a historical novel, for example).
Well, that turns out not to be the case. Try "date -d 1943-01-01" on a system where GNU 'date' is available (Linux, e.g.) Set TZ to an American time zone first if need be.
(Also, we looked at using the Olson TZID abbreviations, but they don't appear to have wide currency -- people in the countries in question didn't seem to be familiar with them -- so we decided not to use them.)
They are not meant to be authentic, and exist because time libraries are expected to provide a time zone abbreviation even where they don't really exist.
-- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan Rather than making ill-conceived suggestions for improvement based on uninformed guesses about established conventions in a field of study with which familiarity is limited, it is sometimes better to stick to merely observing the usage and listening to the explanations offered, inserting only questions as needed to fill in gaps in understanding. --Peter Constable