Bill: What you're describing is already laid out in ISO 8601. (See http://metric1.org/dateandtime.htm. Click on the Markus Kuhn link, under "A Summary of the International Standard Date and Time Notation.")
To answer your punctuation question, there is only a space between the date and the hour -- no comma. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Barbara and/or Bill Hooper Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 03:51 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:18422] Re: 200220022002 on 2/20/2002 6:46 AM, Louis JOURDAN at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Not a real argument for SI nor ISO, but maybe a reason to adopt the > "European" style for date and time ? Why would anyone want to adopt the "European" style of date when the international style of yyyy-mm-dd us so much more logical. One way to get the Europeans and the Americans to get together on something would be to get them BOTH to abandon their current illogical practice and adopt the logical, standard, larger-to-smaller sequence. In it's complete form, it would be year - month - date, hour : min : sec or yyyy-mm-dd, hh:mm:ss that is, the year 2002, on February 25, at 19:45 and 15 seconds (15 seconds after 9:45 pm), would represented by 2002-02-25, 19:45:15 For even finer precision (for eacmple, down to the hundredth of a second) we can write 2002-02-25, 19:45:15.01 for example. The one thing I am uncertain about is the preferred punctuation between the day and the hour. I've used a comma above, but I don't know what is preferred. Can anybody advise me? The advantage of the above format is that it has a logical sequence from larger to smaller just like our numbering system. Also, for convenience, one can simply omit sections off the left end if they are understood, or omit sections off the right end if such precision is not needed. Thus, if we know we are referring to this year, it would be sufficient just to write 02-25, 19:45:15 since the current year, 2002, would be understood. Or, if the time is not needed to the nearest second, write it as 2002-02-25, 19:45 (If both, then write 02-25, 19:45 ) One can also drop off just the century and write the date as 02-02-25 (meaning 2002-02-25, usually but not always). But I wonder about the wisdom of prepetuating the archaic system of writing years with only two digits in light of the problems it caused when the calendar rolled over from 1999 to 2000 (the "Year 2K" problem). Why should we perpetuate a system that will cause further difficulties when we roll over from 2099 to 2100, or worse yet, when we roll over from 2999 to 3000 or from 9999 to 10 000 ? Let's think ahead, WAY ahead! I've already adopted the practice of ALWAYS writing 4 digits for the year. This year is 2002, not '02 as far as I'm concerned. It ain't hard! Regards, Bill Hooper ======================== Keep It Simple - Make It Metric! ========================
