On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 23:47:46 +0100, Zygmunt Wereszczynski wrote: > Very interesting discussions on calendars can be found at > http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/calendar/isocalendar.htm
> ISO defined strict numbering of weeks, days of week, etc. I think it should > be used (and probably is) in The Bat! to avoid misunderstanding of time and > date in scheduler. Zygmunt, if you trace the history of this discussion, you will see that I have already acknowledged that ISO starts the week on Monday. I also stated quite clearly that on this point I choose to differ with ISO. And it seems that I am not alone in this respect, because Microsoft also differs with ISO - or at least provides the flexibility to differ. You must keep in mind that when it comes to dates and calendars, the standards vary widely. This point is clearly explained on the ISO-related URL that you point us to. But, despite ISO's standard, any decent scheduler - and let's not forget that all of this discussion about a TB setting under Preferences is in connection with the TB scheduler - makes allowances for those differences. Imagine that you work for a global company that numbers the weeks of the year in a fashion that is different from the ISO standard. If you want to use the TB scheduler, would it not be annoying to have all of the weeks of the year numbered incorrectly (according to your company) even if it is correct according to ISO? ISO has some logic for changing the numbering of the days so that the first day of the week is Monday and not Sunday. But it is not necessarily the only logic or the best rationale. As I stated earlier, I prefer to maintain the historical and cultural legacy on which the numbering of days is based. The Gregorian calendar, which is the current standard for most of the Western world and has been the standard for well over 400 years, did not differ from the earlier Julian calendar (dating back over 2,000 years) in its recognition of Sunday as the first day of the week. If you examine most Gregorian calendars, you will find that the first day of the week is Sunday. Wiki lovers can check this out by following the link for any month from the following Wikipedia URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_Calendar My personal preference has nothing to do with religion (even though at least the Western numbering of years is closely linked to a religious event, the birth of Jesus). Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that earlier calendars than the Gregorian or even the Julian calendar also recognized a seven-day week in which Saturday was the seventh day and not the sixth. Consider the Ten Commandments of Moses (circa 1250 BC). In those 10 Commandments you are instructed to keep the sabbath day holy, because God allegedly rested on that day (a rather absurd concept, if you ask me, but many religious people - Jewsih, Christian, and Moslem - take this seriously). Even when the Christian Church associated itself with the Roman Empire and moved its "sabbath" to Sunday to compete with the primary day of worship of the Roman God, Mithras, those early Christians did not change the calendar. They changed the concept of the sabbath but not the numbering of the days of the week. So among Christians, the Seventh Day Adventists, to mention a sizeable Christian community, broke with mainstream Christianity on just this point. And notice the name of the group - Seventh Day Adventists, the seventh day being Saturday. (You can confirm this if you like at the following URL: http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/.) Similar is the case with Moslems. Islam moved the sabbath from Saturday to Friday; but still Moslems, despite their pathbreaking achievements in the sciences of mathematics and astronomy, never troubled to change the numbering of the days of the week so that Friday would become day 7. In light of all of the above, it seems rather audacious of Ritlabs to impose such a change. :-) -- Avi Yashar Windows XP Pro SP2 and The Bat! Pro 3.0.2.5 ________________________________________________________ Current beta is 3.0.2.5 Rush | 'Using TBBETA' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html IMPORTANT: To register as a Beta tester, use this link first - http://www.ritlabs.com/en/partners/testers/
