>Dear All,
I now write the date in 13 Oct 2002 form . Otherwise I go crazy trying to switch depending on which country I am in. No one has objected. Although it is interesting that the US customs forms insist on dd/mm/yyyy and the internal government forms are mm/dd etc. One wonders why the TABD carries so much weight. John Nichols >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 John Nichols BE, Ph.D. (Newcastle), MIE (Aust) Assistant Professor Texas A&M University Department of Construction Science Langford AC Rm: A414 MD 3137 College Station, TX 77843-3137 Electronic mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Telephone: 979 845 6541 Facsimile: 979 862 1572 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Magna res est vocis et silentii temperamentum The greatest thing is to know when to speak and when to keep quiet Seneca the Younger (attributed) -----------------------------------------------------------------
