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Working with dates

Several years ago I wrote a paper "GlobalDateTime" or GDT which uses the Modified Julian Date (MJD) and seconds into each such MJD (UDT) to derive GDT. Because these are standards in ordinal number format that are broadcast by atomic time clocks, GDT overcomes any limitations in existing date and/or time systems, such as Fletcher describes.

The essence of GDT is that time without a date is meaningless and therefore an integral combination of date and time serves commerce purposes better than having time as a UDT standard and date as a separate function. Unlike typical internal date and or time formats, the GDT internal format is stored in the application and is converted only when there is a requirement for interpreting such date/time on some sort of human audio visual interaction medium. In GDT that is done done with metadata. Similarly, humans do not input in GDT format but rely on metadata in the application to input in their own cultural time and date formats. However, all communication between applications, be they on the same box or on different boxes, across the room or across the world, is in GDT format.

Thus GDT works the opposite of typical time and date systems. In GDT the computer's internal date/time data is the e-commerce standard whereas in most existing systems the standard is the metadata that is interpreted from the computers internal data. The concepts underlying GDT are well proven and used on at least 100,000 servers around the world.

Anyone interested in the GDT paper can e-mail me and we can discuss GDT off-list. However, if others on the list believe that we can have a meaningful and Darwin relevant discussion about GDT on this list I will be glad to participate. The relevancy stems from the fact that the Mac's system for keeping track of time will need to change, better sooner than later. However, the IT industry has had a history of putting off these unavoidable deadlines, as evidenced by the Y2K disaster. We can change that pattern by discussing how we can do something about the unavoidable now!

Henry Keultjes
MD-Mac Project
Mansfield Ohio USA
Voice 419-525-1111
Home 419-756-0527

Fletcher Sandbeck wrote:
>
> I am looking for a library that allows date calculations in the broadest
> possible range (e.g. from 1 CE up to 5 digit years). The standard C libraries
> seem to only support 1970 to 2038. Is there a library in Darwin which allows
> extended date calculations or can anyone point me to an open source library?
>
> [fletcher]
>
> --
> Fletcher Sandbeck email@hidden
> Cumuli Design http://www.cumuli.com/
> Lanstat Patient Planner http://www.patientplanner.net/
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