Scott Dudley wrote in a message to Gerry Danen:
 SD>> Why does compliance mean 4-digit years? If Maximus were to support
 SD>> 2-digit years properly ("01/14/00 = January 14, 2000"), how on earth
 SD>> could that not be compliance?
 GD> Interpretation is not compliance. Compliance means there is not a single
 GD> doubt as to what 01/14/00 means.
SD> Aye, but therein lies the rub.
SD> Suppose that we go whole-hog and we write October the 12th, 2001 as
SD> "10/12/2001".  Surely, that must eliminate all ambiguity, right? 
 
SD> Unfortunately, in the other 94.3% of the world that is not the
SD> United States, that date would be interpreted as December the 10th,
SD> 2001.  Your Japanese callers will have to figure out if that date
SD> means jyu-ni-gatsu jyu-nichi or jyu-gatsu jyu-ni-nichi.
 At least the Japanese use periods between the sets of numbers, which
 is a habit I've adopted along with reading magazines 'backwards.'
 Makes for strange looks when I slip and do that in public.  :)
 What worries me, and you, it seems, are the Americans, Brits, and
 Europeans who all use / between the numbers and put the numbers in
 different orders depending on who's doing it.
 It confuses me /now/ when I stumble across a date like 14/01/95
 or 2/10/97.  Which is the month and date?  Is it October 2 or
 February 10th?
 This Y2K mess is not going to help that, but only make it worse, I
 fear, especially if someone imposes some sort of standard on it.
 Suppose the Euro way is adopted as official.  Americans would react
 the same way the reacted when the Metric system was introduced: bitch
 and complain and reject it entirely.
 Which is not to say that the American way would be better or worse
 than any other; just that we will not want to change.  Doubt anyone
 else will either, no matter how much press Y2K gets.  People hate
 changing. 
 *snip*
SD> You complain of ambiguity... but please remember that people have
SD> been using two-digit dates for at least the last eighty-seven years
SD> without complaints. Two billion people can't all be wrong (except
SD> when it comes to McDonald's). 
 Wonder how the Chinese do their dates. If the majority rules....
 *snip*
 GD> The separator character has nothing to do with compliance.  You have an
SD> You indicated that Maximus HAD to follow whatever the industry did. 
SD> If the industry decides to ban dashes, why should Maximus follow
SD> that?  The computer industry has, in hindsight, done a lot of stupid
SD> things (ISA, EMS, segment:offset, the packed date format in DOS, ad
SD> nauseum).
 The computer industry has NO right to do squat to the seperator
 character.  THAT little character belongs to whatever society or
 country happens to use it, which means that IBM or whoever cannot
 just mandate that, Japan, for example, will now use / in their dates
 and expect it to just happen.  HAH!
 SD>> As long as date handling is internally consistent and an intuitive way
 SD>> to do things, who cares what the rest of the industry does?
 GD> Not to insult you, but I think that's a pretty narrow-minded view.
SD> When the three little piggies went to build their houses, and Puff
SD> the Magic Dragon came to blow them all down, it was only Winnie the
SD> Pooh's house which remained standing because he decided to build it
SD> out of something else.  I think it's pretty narrow-minded if you
SD> only do what everyone else is doing. 
 If we all did what everyone else did... none of us would ever DO
 anything.  We could all just sleep in like the guy down the street.
 GD> are cheap these days. Take the following log extract for example
 GD>   + 12 Oct 11:03:01 MAX  Begin, v3.01 (task=1)
SD> Of course, Maximus only uses this log file format for historical
SD> reasons.  I suppose that we could change the log, but it would break
SD> lots of other programs. 
 Why bother?  It's only good for a year NOW, using the current date format.
 It just recycles on Jan 1 of every year, yet doesn't overwrite itself
 or anything.  No need to bother with the log, IMO.
 Besides, I zip up my logs every now and then, so there's never even a
 year's worth in the actual log. 
SD> PS: As you may have guessed, when I was in grade school, I got about
SD> the same mark on both the "Fairy Tales" and the "Roman Numerals"
SD> units... 
 How much have you really, really needed Roman numerals since then?
 I know it's not exactly the most useful thing I learned.   :)
 The fairy tales may come in handy for my kids, if my memory hasn't
 failed me by then.  *_o
 Patrick
--- timEd 1.10
---------------