I'm not sure what the purpose of this discussion is.
The components of SMTP email headers were established 20 years ago, in RFC
821. The protocol requires dd mmm yy format, as described below:
<daytime> ::= <SP> <date> <SP> <time>
<date> ::= <dd> <SP> <mon> <SP> <yy>
<time> ::= <hh> ":" <mm> ":" <ss> <SP> <zone>
<dd> ::= the one or two decimal integer day of the month in
the range 1 to 31.
<mon> ::= "JAN" | "FEB" | "MAR" | "APR" | "MAY" | "JUN" |
"JUL" | "AUG" | "SEP" | "OCT" | "NOV" | "DEC"
<yy> ::= the two decimal integer year of the century in the
range 00 to 99.
Unless and until there is a major revision to SMTP (not likely), developers
of email software have no choice but to follow this protocol.
This is not a good topic for this listserver, as neither SMTP nor ISO 8601
has anything to do with SI. (ISO 8601 is philosophically consistent with SI
and is, in my opinion, a good thing. But it isn't SI.)
Please see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0821.txt.
Now, if you're talking about the "Received" date and time stamp in message
header lines, as opposed to SMTP message headers, I've been displaying the
date and time in ISO 8601 format for a long time now. Both Outlook 2000
(under Windows XP Pro on my laptop) and Outlook Express 5.5 (on my Windows
98 SE machine) conform perfectly to my Windows Regional Options. I'm not
sure where the difficulty arises.
Bill Potts, CMS
Roseville, CA
http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
>Behalf Of Han Maenen
>Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 12:54
>To: U.S. Metric Association
>Subject: [USMA:22487] Re: Why ISO paper is metric and US paper is not
>
>
>It is very difficult to get the headers of one's emails to give ISO 8601.
>Outlook Express always seems to use MMM-DD-YY and am/pm, irrespective of
>one's regional settings. This is the reason why John gets all these e-mails
>with MM-DD-YYYY and am/pm formats from abroad. I have two PC's. One has
>Windows 98, the new one that I use for the Internet has Windows XP. Both
>were set to the Dutch language and metric, YYYY-MM-DD and 24 hour format in
>the regional settings. Yet my e-mails produced American date and time; John
>had informed of this. What did I do? Really weird. To start, I set my new
>computer to USA English. Then I changed within that format all the relevant
>settings: system of units, date, time, decimal marker and currency
>unit. And
>it worked! Outlook Express, always going to USA settings, accepted my
>modified ones. Now my e-mail headers show the YYYY-MM-DD and 24 hour
>settings at last.
>
>Han
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "kilopascal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Sunday, 2002-10-06 16:23
>Subject: [USMA:22472] Re: Why ISO paper is metric and US paper is not
>
>
>> 2002-10-06
>>
>> Markus,
>>
>> I have received e-mails at work from many different parts of the
>world and
>> in ALL cases, the header that their computers produce is in the
>US format.
>> My computer is set to the ISO format, so it displays on their computers
>that
>> way, but theirs always appears in the US format. This is because
>Microsoft
>> defaults its operating system to US formats when English is the selected
>> language, and all of the correspondences so far have their settings to
>> English.
>
><snip>
>> John
>
><snip>
>
>
