On 02/23/2014 03:16 AM, Stephan Hradek wrote:
Am Sonntag, 23. Februar 2014 08:16:55 UTC+1 schrieb Anton Aylward:
On 02/23/2014 01:42 AM, Stephan Hradek wrote:
> Sorry, Anton, but sometimes I have the slight feeling that you
tend to
> overcomplicate things. ;)
As far as I can make out, date and date processing *is* complicated.
Not at all, if you stay consistant with your strings.
I said "complicated", not "complex" and having looked at the source of
the Date code and the source of a replacement which has more flexibility
and range I stick by that statement. There's a lot to do dealing with
all the possible patterns that Date.parse() has to handle but which in
fact the implementation in my browser DOES NOT HANDLE. Considering that
the implementation is 64 bits worth of milliseconds, the limit in date
range is surprising.
Looking at the code for 'moment.js', one such package, which,
incidentally, handles dates BC and dates over a much wider range
http://momentjs.com/docs/
I'm not sure what you mean by "date calculations". […]
I mentioned this is for writing stories.
no doubt you've seen things in novels that red something like "three
days later". Is that what you are talking about?
Exactly! You will only need dates as numbers, when you want to calculate
the differences between dates or want to add or substract days.
The classic UNIX model: milliseconds since Jan 1 1970.
But the JavaScript Date() package seems to give a lot more functions.
And somewhere along the way (a) limits the date range and (b) doesn't
implement all of the ISO standard. The background about moment.js and
an examination of the parser in that code makes this very clear.
So long as a story line thread stays one side or the other it doesn't
matter.
You came up with the year 63 which is clearly far befor the gregorian
calendar ;)
That fact is beside the point. If I'm writing about Rome in the time of
the Domitian as does Lindsey Davis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsey_Davis
for example then that's possible. Or perhaps a BC date such as in the
Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleen_McCullough#Masters_of_Rome_series
Why shouldn't I write a story set in the first century?
Vernor Vinge has stores that have a calendar based entirely on seconds,
no months or years. Donald Kingsbury wrote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistorical_Crisis
which has a 'decimal' calendar based on the speed of light.
What I'm concerned about is the UI, not the historic accuracy.
What I'm concerned about is that you want to use something which is not
appropriate for the purpose you want to use it for.
Please explain what you mean by that.
You seem to be telling me that I * have* to deal with the different
types of calendars out there, all of them, before I can write *any*
story set in *any* era. This has to be complete and perfect before I
can start.
Right now I'm thinking 'fegetaboutit' and make the "date of this scene'
a string and have a 'hidden variable' that I fill in by hand that is the
time sequence number. That way I can write Star Trek novels that mix
Earth, Vulcan and Romulan calendars with impunity. The "date" is just a
string and could even be "one month and two days later".
What I hate about that is that its a manual system not an automatic one.
Its making me do the work rather than the computer do the work and let
me get on with writing the story.
The point is the UI, the convenience of representation and the ordering
of chapters and scenes, not the academic accuracy of a calendar system.
Its the convenience that is my reason for using Tiddlywiki. Much of the
design is based on a system I had purchased but the vendor went bust and
the net-based store&licensing means I can no longer access my work.
(One reason I've come to distrust 'the cloud'.)
--
In matters of style, swim with the current;
In matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- T. Jefferson
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
