Re: First day of the week? Which one?
Re: First day of the week? Which one?
- Subject: Re: First day of the week? Which one?
- From: Wade Tregaskis <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 23:00:10 +1000
But for that one example, there's plenty of others involving date
handling where it's probably irrelevant. Can you share your
particular scenario with us?
I guess there should perhaps be a setting for this in the Date &
Time preference pane.
In Germany and AFAIK most of Europe the week starts Monday. This
influences things like the week of the year (a concept heavily used
in businesses of here) and very visibly the way wall calendars look
like. If anybody starts her personal week on Thursday that's fine,
but I think Australia does have an official definition for this. I
know there is a ISO Standard for calculating the week of the year...
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week
The "first week of the year" is defined by the ISO as the first week
in January to contain a Thursday; i.e. the first week with a majority
of days in the new year, if you take Monday as the first day of the
week, which they do. That's all good and dandy, but I'd never heard
of this in my life until you mentioned it. From Wikipedia's article
on the subject: "This style of numbering is commonly used (for
example, by businesses) in some European countries, but rare elsewhere.
Not to be overly belittling, but I don't think it's up to some airy
fairy group to tell me or anyone else when they start their week.
Thus, it's good that the original poster is seeking ways to handle
this appropriately.
Also keep in mind that the ISO may not have authority in some
regions. I can't recall for sure the details in Australia, but I'm
pretty sure Australian engineers are expected to follow IEEE
standards, not ISO. The IEEE seems to favour Monday, but does
acknowledge the historical prevalence of Sunday, and seems to
encourage support for at least both.
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/date.html
Also note that it's the IEEE that provides the POSIX family of
standards, not the ISO. So anyone living and breathing *nix should
be looking to the IEEE, not ISO.
In any case, this discussion, while excitingly political, has no real
practicality. Follow iCal's example - have a pop-up menu with every
day of the week in it. Default to Monday if you like (I have a
feeling iCal does).
When it comes time to calculate stuff like this "week of the year"
thing, though, you're in trouble. There's several ways acknowledged
by the IEEE, plus the ISO way - which is more complex. If you need
to do that in your software, I don't envy you. The theme seems to
be, however, that the IEEE first week of the year is the first week
in the year starting with the first day of the week - Monday, if you
like. Or Sunday. Heck, use Octeday if you really want. Whereas ISO
favours the first week containing four or more days in the new year.
Good thing we don't have an Octeday then, eh? :)
Lastly, brownie points to anyone who can explain how a group calling
themselves the "International Organization for Standardization" -
ironically using American spelling, not English - can figure their
acronym as "ISO"?
Wade Tregaskis
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