Subject: Re: [lojban] Sane and Rational date format (was: (from lojban-beginners) pi'e

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 11:46:04 -0400

At 06:16 PM 9/13/01 -0400, Invent Yourself <[email-masked]> 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 [email-masked]
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