>2) The program assumes a crown-colony environment. By that I mean it
>(cleverly) compensates for the switch from the Julian calendar to the
>Gregorian calendar in the British Empire, in September 1752. Other parts
>of the world switched at later or earlier times (I'm looking at
>http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/khagen/GregConv.html which has a
>good description). More Roman Catholic areas switched when the plan was
>announced, in the 1580's. Protestant areas tended to wait until the 1700's
>(with Sweeden changing its mind a few times). Areas looking more towards
>Constantinople than Rome (Greek, Russian, Ukranian churches, etc.) tended
>to wait until the 20th century. Russia and Russian-dominated areas for
>instance changed after the Bolsheviks took power.
>
>If we add timezone support, it is a logical yet painful step to try and
>add support for the above. :-(

ideally, imho, this sort of information should be in the time zone
files.  information about when the gregorian reform was adopted
actually (almost) falls into the scope of time zone stuff, since
russia (or the soviet union as it then came to be known) didn't switch
until after "Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 UTC 1901".  hmm....albania, bulgaria,
estonia, greece, latvia, lithuania, romania, and yugoslavia also seem
to be in that club.

it'd also be nice (again, imho) if the time zone files could specify
an alternate "epoch", if you will, so that one could easily convert
from the "standard" calendar to another one.  say...hebrew?  something
like "t=0 corresponds to {0, 0, 0, 7, 4, 5730}".  at least...i think
that's the numbers it needs.

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