At 04:28 PM, 14 October 2002 +0100, Tom Wade VMS Systems wrote: > >Today is 13 October 2002. > >If you are sure that your target audience is English speaking, I agree this >date format is optimal. The point about ISO format is that it is >preferable to >either the mm/dd/yy(yy) or dd/mm/yy(yy) that is in common use today. Also, >there may be places where dates are important across a language boundary, >e.g. the dates on passports, credit cards, driving licenses etc.
I did not mean to imply that my particular alphanumeric date format is optimal. That would vary on the country and style. However, as long as the month is done with letters rather than numbers, it is **much** less likely to be misinterpreted, and (as long as the month is in someone's native language) it is easier to assimilate than using numbers for the month. It might be said that an alphanumeric format is more robust in most situations than an all-numeric format. If a date MUST be numeric only, the ISO 8601 format is just fine. I would suggest that such a requirement is very unusual, and generally represents laziness on the part of programmers. Until such time as the ISO format is widely recognized and understood, it has no substantial cross-cultural advantage over an alphanumeric format. At 06:10 PM, 14 October 2002 +0100, Markus Kuhn wrote: >And ISO 8601 explicitely says that it does *not* aim at replacing these. >All ISO aims at is replacing all other *all-numeric* formats, such as >10/13/02 or 13.10.02, and there can't be anything wrong with that. I have no argument with this. Jim Elwell, CAMS Electrical Engineer Industrial manufacturing manager Salt Lake City, Utah, USA www.qsicorp.com
