On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]>wrote:
> I was looking at the calendar on my wall - all the days are there and July > 1st > is always Aani 17th. But in practice this is not so - from what you say and > from what I have understood. Therefore the printed tamil calendar can only > be > accurate with a margin of error of two days. Right? - only the name of the > year can be more or less accurate - but even that, for the beginning and > the > end of the year there is a two day margin of error? > > The printed calendar will always be right - This is because the designers would have referred to a Panchangam, which will give them the astronomical data, or more simply the entire calendar to refer to. This is one of the reasons why there will be a Panchangam printed every year. Calculations are made (or referred to an ephemeris) for the year and then printed. There is no perpetual calendar like the western calendar. Regarding varying start of month, take a look at this- The month of Aadi starts on- 16th July in 1996, 17th July in 1997, 17th July in 1998, 17th July in 1999, 16th July in 2000, 16th July in 2001, 16th July in 2002 Regarding varying number of days for the same month, take a look at this- Month of Vaikasi had 32 days in 1996 and 31 days in 1998. Similarly, Aani had 31 days in 1996 and 32 days in 1998. Yes, the year names are more simple - 60 names cycled over and over. This 60 years is based on 5 Jupiter revolutions around the sun (Jovian periods). [Off topic to this discussion] This discussion uses the term 'varying' only because we want to "Map" the Tamil calendar to the western calendar. Most problems in local computing is because of this, including the simple keyboard. We are trying to "Map"/"Adapt" the English keyboard to enter languages which have no grammatical similarity with English. FOSS software and hardware has the power to let us create fundamental computing blocks which can be out of the box and not an adaptation. This gives us an opportunity to use the brilliance of our cultural/scientific heritage (Indian calendars / languages) in computing. Arun. -- Arun Venkataswamy http://arun289.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
