From erik@sran8.sra.co.jp Tue Dec 18 14:41:57 1990 Received: from mcsun.EU.net by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA19351; Tue, 18 Dec 90 14:41:57 +0100 Received: by mcsun.EU.net with SMTP; Tue, 18 Dec 90 14:40:28 +0100 Received: from srava.sra.co.jp by srawgw.sra.co.jp (5.64WH/1.4) id AA04698; Tue, 18 Dec 90 22:39:27 +0900 Received: from sran8.sra.co.jp by srava.sra.co.jp (5.64b/6.4J.6-BJW) id AA17514; Tue, 18 Dec 90 22:39:37 +0900 Received: from localhost by sran8.sra.co.jp (4.0/6.4J.6-SJ) id AA00781; Tue, 18 Dec 90 22:37:32 JST Return-Path: Message-Id: <9012181337.AA00781@sran8.sra.co.jp> Reply-To: erik@sra.co.jp From: Erik M. van der Poel To: Matt.Caprile@medoc.ec.bull.fr Cc: i18n@dkuug.dk, XoTGinter@xopen.co.uk Subject: Re: (i18n 51) Alternate calendars [was: Japanese profile] Date: Tue, 18 Dec 90 22:37:29 +0900 Sender: erik@sran8.sra.co.jp X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 > 2- In regards to "We don't need %E since we have %Y" : > The definition of %Y [and %y] implies the Gregorian calandar: > "the year with[out] century as a decimal number". In Taiwan, the > calandar is dated from the "republic" (~1925?) and doesn't HAVE a > century number. I think it's 1911. Can anyone confirm this? Anyway, when it is 2011 in the Gregorian calendar, it will be 100 in Taiwan, so they will "have" a century number. Similarly, in the Gregorian years 0-99 they "had" a century number, didn't they? (By the way, the fact that you said that "The definition of %Y [and %y] implies..." is not such a good sign; specifications shouldn't "imply", they should *specify*.) > In most of the North African countries, for example, > BOTH types of dates are almost always printed, on calandars, newspapers, > etc. OK, I just had a look at a Japanese newspaper, and indeed it also has *both* the Japanese year and the Western year printed on the front page. So you could be right -- we may need to support more than one year format in the locale. Now, as proof of concept (or just for fun :-) let's see if we can express the year, as printed on the newspaper that I just checked, using Sekiguchi-san's Japanese locale example. The newspaper prints the year as HEISEI 2 NEN (1990 NEN) where the "HEISEI" and "NEN" are Japanese Kanji. (I didn't think it would be wise to try to send JIS X0208 (16-bit Japanese) data via email. :-) Clearly, the "HEISEI 2 NEN" part is %E. And the "1990" part is %Y. However, there does not seem to be a way of getting the "NEN" after the "1990" using (the X/Open extended version of) the POSIX.2/D10 specs. We could solve this problem by adding a new format to the LC_TIME specs -- y_fmt, to be accessed through %z (or whatever), and defined as "%Y NEN" in the Japanese locale. My, oh my. Aren't we having fun. Or is this just absurd? > In the North African countries, there are usually two (and sometimes 3) > types of dates printed Sometimes 3, eh? So maybe we need to add another letter to the list. How about %Y, %E and %J? What, 3 is too many? Well, isn't 2 too many, then? No? Oh, OK, I see: You're trying to define a *reasonable* standard. :-) > %Y for the [Japanese] representation of the Gregorian year > > ---- Matt Caprile phone : +33 7639 7752 fax: +33 7639 7518 ---- You probably mean %z. :-) Erik