-=> On 13 Sep 96  04:42:00 <=-
-=> Frank Adam was heard to tell John Gardeniers <=-

    Hi Frank,

 -=> Quoting John Gardeniers to Paul Edwards <=-

 JG> It isn't so much that I have a dislike for anything specific
 JG> that ISO has done.  I simply feel that a weights and measures
 JG> organisation has no place interfering with the finer arts, such as
 FA> Hm, and they were nothing before becoming a weights and measures org.
 FA> and now they've expanded into those finer arts.

 FA> After all they ARE the International Standards Organization.
 FA> I'd hazard a guess that architectural engineers are not very deeply
 FA> involved in defining any of the programming standards and vice versa.

    Interestingly, the final decisions are often made by a bunch of
people who are more expert in the wording of a document rather than
what the document is about.  Have a look at some of the ISO
definitions and you'll see what I mean.  Very often a standard comes
about simply because a more realistic one would have been too hard
to define.  ISO is concerned only with *defining* things.  They
couldn't care less about the practicalities at all.

    I feel I've probably said enough about ISO, and possibly annoyed
enough people as well, so I won't go on about it any more.

    In order to bring this back on topic, in another message you
talked about the starting point for the calendar, as used in TIME.H.
As I don't even have a copy of that file (never needed it either) I
can't test this for myself; What is the result of simply using
negative numbers in the calculations?  I've seen a number of
calendar programs over the years and a few of these have also
arbitrarily use 1900 as the reference point.  Nevertheless, they are
able to work with dates in the BC range without trouble.

        John

... Really honey....just 1 more message.
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