ISO 8601:1986 revision has started!

[Markus G. Kuhn]

I just got an interesting reply from Mr. Louis Visser <Louis.Visser at 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 at cs.purdue.edu