Hi Mike On Thu, 2011-09-15 at 02:13 +0100, Mike Elston wrote: > Hi Ron, > > On 15 Sep 2011, at 00:17 BST, you wrote: > > > o The GEDCOM standard specifically lists only a few language > > escapes, on > > p 45: Gregorian, Julian, Hebrew, French, Roman and Unknown. Make of > > that > > what you will. > > These are not languages, they are fundamentally different calendars: > > o the Julian calendar (the well-known plan of the days and months > created by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., but finally stabilized about 8 > A.D.; the numbering of the years, with 1 A.D. being the year of the > birth of Jesus Christ, came about centuries later, when it was agreed > the calendar begins in 4714 B.C.); > > o The Gregorian calendar (in use around most of the western and new > world today, this is a modification of the Julian calendar made in > October 1582 to correct for the discovery that the Julian calendar > was out by about 3 days in every 400 years; in some countries it > replaced the Julian calendar much later, eg in England in 1752, and > not until 1923 in Greece); > > o the Hebrew calendar (the Jewish year 1 is 3761 B.C. by the Julian > calendar; this calendar has lunar months 29-30 days long, of which > there are 12 most years, but 13 in its leap years); > > o the French Revolutionary calendar (in use from October 1793 ( "year > 1") but abandoned in January 1806 in Gregorian terms; it has 12 > months of 30 days each, plus an extra 5 or 6 days grouped at the end > of the year) > > o the Roman calendar (I assume by this the GEDCOM standard means pre- > Christian, and maybe pre-Julian); > > o GEDCOM makes provision for dates from an unknown calendar. > > The GEDCOM standard does not refer at all to oriental calendars, > about which I know very little. > > Of course, the Julian/Gregorian months have different names in many > languages (including French and Hebrew!), but the calendar is always > the same.
OK! I admit my code does not really check days per month for, say, any of the Julian Calendars, as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar. In order to do that, the code would have to permit the user to specify month names for their chosen (say) Julian calendar, and days per month, and the same for any other calendar. To that end, Mike Hamilton's suggestion of set_* and get_* sound like a better mechanism than my default. Let me think about it. After all, I've released the /first/ version of this code, not the /last/... -- Ron Savage http://savage.net.au/ Ph: 0421 920 622
