From jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU Thu Sep 13 09:45:36 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jimc@math.ucla.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_1); 13 Sep 2001 16:45:35 -0000 Received: (qmail 19738 invoked from network); 13 Sep 2001 16:45:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 13 Sep 2001 16:45:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO simba.math.ucla.edu) (128.97.4.125) by mta3 with SMTP; 13 Sep 2001 16:45:33 -0000 Received: from localhost (jimc@localhost) by simba.math.ucla.edu (8.11.3/8.11.3/SuSE Linux 8.11.1-0.5) with ESMTP id f8DGjJp08552 for ; Thu, 13 Sep 2001 09:45:19 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: simba.math.ucla.edu: jimc owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 09:45:19 -0700 (PDT) To: Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e In-Reply-To: <01091301045709.27443@neofelis> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: "James F. Carter" On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Pierre Abbat wrote: > On Thursday 13 September 2001 00:42, Rob Speer wrote: > > I think there is an intrinsic reason. Dates go from smaller to larger > > units, and times go from larger to smaller. Combining them like that gives > > the bizarre order: hour, minute, [second], day, month, year. > >... > > 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. And an upper case T may replace the blank if absolutely necessary. There are also specifications for day-of-week and day-of-year. 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. Lojban ought to include itself in the world cultural community, and adopt the ISO-8601 date order, ignoring baseline issues on the grounds that the original decision was a mistake brought about because nobody at that time had thought about the subsequently resolved functional issues. A lot can happen in 16 years. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)