epochs and the gregorian reform

Andrew Brown atatat at atatdot.net
Fri Aug 1 13:07:25 UTC 2003


>Then there is the way standards such as ISO-8601 handle the problem...
>they ignore it, running the current calendar back, as if there was
>no calendar correction, into dim history.  Such are called "proleptic"
>calendar, which I view as an artifical calendar not good for any dates,
>but an agreed upon way to handle the problem. People receiving such
>dates convert them to the local dates, as appropriate.

yeah, well, that strikes as "solving the problem by agreeing not to
solve the problem".  :)

>I don't really LIKE this solution, however getting everyone to agree on
>what calendars changed when is very difficult. Especially since
>countries, such as the United States, changed on different dates
>depending on what country controlled the land at any particular moment.
>A real can of worms.

here's a list of points i think we could probably agree on.

(1) things changed.
(2) having a list of said changes would be good.
(3) assembling such a list will be difficult.

actually, the third point would probably be about as hard as it was to
bootstrap the tz data, maybe simpler, and we also don't have lots of
"crazy" governments running around saying "gregorian!  julian!
reformed julian!  gregorian!", so the churn ought not to be as high.

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