==Please reply to this message off-list directly to me.
Frankly, I simply do not understand why you guys can't believe that MacOS
9.0 is limited to 2040.
>From Harry
> That is a function of the Date & Time control panel, NOT of the underlying
> OS. As previously stated, I'm sure someone will provide a revision to it by
> 2040.
No. It is because the pre-MacOS X Toolbox API for setting the date
(SetDateTime) constrains the user to that of 2040.
>From http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1049.html
> You can set a date beyond 2019, up to the year 2040, by using the Macintosh
> Toolbox call SetDateTime().
So at this time, there is NO possible way of setting the pre-MacOS X current
date to anything beyond 2040.
Furthermore, from
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/OSUtilities/OSUtilities-98.html#HEAD
ING98-0
> The Date-Time Record
> The date-time record describes the date-time information as a date and time.
> The Date, Time, and Measurement Utilities use a date-time record to read and
> write date-time information to and from the clock chip. The DateTimeRec data
> type defines the date-time record.
>
>
> Note
> The date-time record can be used to hold date and time values only for a
> Gregorian calendar. The long date-time record (described on page 4-26) can be
> used for a Gregorian calendar as well as other calendar systems.
>
>
> TYPE DateTimeRec =
> RECORD
> year: Integer; {year, ranging from 1904 to 2040}
<<SNIP>>
> Field Description
> year
> The year, ranging from 1904 to 2040. Note that to indicate the year 1984, this
> field would store the integer 1984, not just 84. This field accepts input of 0
> or negative values, but these values produce unpredictable results in the
> year, month, and day fields when you use the SecondsToDate and DateToSeconds
> procedures. In addition, using SecondsToDate and DateToSeconds with year
> values greater than 2040 causes a wraparound to 1904 plus the number of years
> over 2040. For example, setting the year to 2045 returns a value of 1909, and
> the other fields in this record return unpredictable results.
It seems to me that this pre-MacOS X Toolbox API doesn't particularly care
about Buddhist, Starfleet, or Jewish calendars.
The only piece of evidence that shows post 2040 support is that MacOS 9
introduced support somewhat for 2108.
>From http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1176.html#utcutil
> Facilities have been provided for conversion between UTC (Coordinated
> Universal Time) and local time. With this release, these routines operate on
> dates between the years 1904 and 2108.
However, the Facilities in question appear to relate only to GetDateTime
which returns the system clock. And this only appeared in OS 9!!
Finally, please recall that the multi-thousand year claim that cited is from
a TIL written in 1999 -- the height of the Y2k scare. Perhaps this article
was more marketing driven than dev driven.
I hope this brings closure to this thread.
Again, if you feel a need to respond, please reply off-list directly to me.
Notes:
1) This does not cover what MacOS X does.
--
Dennis T Cheung
dtc (at) pobox.com
http://dennistcheung (dot) com
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