[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [lojban] Sane and Rational date format (was: (from lojban-beginners) pi'e
At 06:16 PM 9/13/01 -0400, Invent Yourself <xod@sixgirls.org> wrote:
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, James F. Carter wrote:
> > I think that when dates and times are combined, and they are all
numeric, the
> > order should be year, month, day, hour, minute, second.
>
> I agree. ISO 8601 specifies dates in the following variant formats:
>
> ccyymmdd 19991231
> ccyymmddhhmmss 19991231235959
> ccyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss 1999-12-31 23:59:59
> And trimming any of the time parts from either end, if unambiguous.
Which it usually is. I can't leave off the century, and report the time my
computer says it is locally: 0109141131 could equally be January 9 of some
unspecified year at 14:11:31.
> As international relations (of the positive kind) grow and strengthen it is
> important that partners be able to interchange data, specifically digital
> records containing ISO-8859-x encoded dates. All cultures are going to
> have to give up their idiosyncratic date formats and adopt a common
> standard, of which ISO-8601 is the presently obvious one, besides being
> totally serviceable in my opinion.
Except that no human being uses it. I've never had anyone respond to a
question as to the date who gave me the time as well. USUALLY when I ask
for the date from a human, I get the month specified by name rather than
number - I use numbers as an abbreviation in filling out forms.
I'm not opposed to world standards, but this simply isn't one for real
human beings, only for computers.
It is a compatible standard, and it is simple to understand without weird
internal reversals of endianism, following a single rule. These arguments
seem to override invocations of tradition. detri4 can be filled to clue in
the readers that cuvjdikapoi is being used.
Certainly if someone wants to use a non-Lojbanic date format, it can be
marked in the date place. I would use tarmi in the lujvo though, maybe
tedmartai. Or of course la .isobixanopam.
But I probably won't.
lojbab
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org