On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, Andrew Brown wrote:

> >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.

I thought Russia changed with the October revolution, in 1917. :-)

The problem is to add this means adding a lot of history. Also consider
the evil case of: 1) Sweeden, which didn't cleanly transition and was on
neither calendar for a while. 2) A place that was captured by protestants
from catholics in the 1600's. i.e. the place had been on the Gregorian
calendar, then switched off with the new power group, then switched later
when that group moved to the Gregorian calendar. ??

> 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.

I can see an advantage for such a thing, but please, make it something
other than cal? To get dates & calendars right to this level of detail
takes, well, a lot of detail. ;-)

Take care,

Bill