From nicholas@uci.edu Thu Sep 13 18:26:41 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_1); 14 Sep 2001 01:26:40 -0000 Received: (qmail 14514 invoked from network); 13 Sep 2001 21:48:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 13 Sep 2001 21:48:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta1 with SMTP; 13 Sep 2001 21:48:25 -0000 Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA22855; Thu, 13 Sep 2001 14:48:25 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 14:48:25 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: To: Cc: Nick NICHOLAS Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Nick NICHOLAS The YY-MM-DD format which the ISO has prescribes is what I've been using for the past ten years; I was taught it as an engineering student. There's a lot of it about. The kind of "noone else is doing it, quasigovernmental whim" stuff pc brings up is (a) bogus (though characteristically libertarian :-) ), and (b) the reason why the metric system will never happen in the States. It's nonsense, but it's you guys' loss. The Lojban-internal reasons adduced are also not compelling to me. Noone's going to confuse dates with trailing sumti; it'd be quite OK not to have them behave the same. After all, Linnaean taxonomy is not going to work like that in Lojban either: you'll still be naming Genus and Species, and omitting every taxon above it. That said, I am committed to the baseline (yes, I'm avoiding using the word I'd normally use for now), which means my Lojban web page is my only page that *doesn't* have YY-MM-DD. But, reason being reason, I see no cause not to allow YY-MM-DD in Lojban text if explicitly signalled. Date ordering is not hardcoded into the grammar, after all. As long as noone defends MM-DD-YY -- or even *considers* using it in Lojban -- I'm not too fussed. (After all, if it wasn't for the braindamage of MM-DD-YY, do you think the ISO would have even bothered mandating YY-MM-DD? It's the only reason there's any ambiguity to dates at all.) Nick, who's still getting caught out by MM-DD-YY after living in the States for 2.5 years. -- == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Nick Nicholas, Breathing I REJECT {gumri} nicholas@uci.edu (Lojban Wiki, Resurrected Gismu)