Re: Date question with weeknumber
Re: Date question with weeknumber
- Subject: Re: Date question with weeknumber
- From: "Mark J. Reed" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 08:41:59 -0400
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 3:51 AM, Nigel Garvey
<email@hidden> wrote:
> Of course, you could
>pick any Monday in the Julian calendar as well, but based on your comment
>above I infer that would not work on pre-SL systems.
Any Monday works pre-SL as well
I think you misunderstand me. Of course any Monday works. I mean, you shouldn't have to restrict yourself to the Gregorian range; October 1, 1582 was a Monday, so you should be able to use that as your base date if you wanted. On SL that works, but what I inferred from your comment is that pre-SL systems would interpret that as a Gregorian date and therefore a Friday instead.
>I remain surprised the date of Julian/Gregorian conversion isn't
>locale-sensitive in Applescript, though.
I think it's pretty clueless implementing it anyway, given the potential
for wrecking date calculations, the unlikelihood of anyone wanting to
know Julian dates, and the fact that — as you say — the "date at the
time" is only going to be correct for a handful of locations anyway.
I disagree; for historical dates, the Julian calendar is used almost exclusively. Mount Vesuvius erupted on either August 24 or November 23, 79 AD, depending on which interpretation of the documentation you favor. Either way, the date is in the Julian calendar and refers to a Tuesday, not a Thursday. This pattern holds for all famous dates that precede the Gregorian adoption: the Battle of Hastings was on October 14th, not the 20th; and nobody chants "Remember, Remember, the 15th of November"... even though that's what calendars said right across the Channel.
This is simple convention that has little to do with the calendar actually in use. The Romans implemented the leap year rule incorrectly at first, so for dates between 46 BC and 8 AD the way we compute the Julian calendar doesn't necessarily match actual Roman use at the time; and of course before 46 BC the Julian calendar didn't exist. Neither fact stops us from using the reverse projection of the Julian calendar for those time periods.
So on its own, having dates track the calendar change is reasonable. However, I agree that changing that behavior in an established system seems like a bad idea. As does the lack of locale sensitivity.
--
Mark J. Reed <
email@hidden>
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