I had thrown open some of my views for writing of the date formats being an instrumental to evolution in Descending Order Date Writing recommendations ISO/R 2015-1971(E) and ISO 8601:1988 and my comments with Indian Standards, New Delhi. Due to continued disparity, I brought out these points in my documents:
(a) All Numeral Decaday Dating; Book - Towards A Unified Technology (1982); pages 121 thro 127; Soni Book Agency, New Delhi;
(b) Need to Revise Length Unit for Decimalisation of the Hour in Relation to Angular Degree and World Decimal Calendar with Leap Weeks: Standards India; Vol 12 No9; 1998 December; pp.217 � 222; Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi;
(c) Relevance of the Metre in Indus Civilisation when Linked with Times Unit and Calendar Reform with Leap Weeks; Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Metrology, Quality and Global Trade (MQGT-�99); pp.257 � 264; National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi; 1999 February 24-26.
Several modes to *date writing* were exhibited as:
10.4.36; 10-4-36; 10.4.1936; 10-4-1936; 10 Apr.36; 10 Apr.'36; 10 April, 1936; April 10, 1936; 10th Apr.1936 or 10th April 1936 etc.
this order could be reversed with YEAR first and produce another TEN ways to 'already confused' date writing. There is no end to 'discussions, views and counter-views' BUT it is the implementation that is wanted.
The need, I have repeatedly pointed is for *Standardisation of Date Writing format* and happily ISO 8601:2000 is one such document. Let it be followed as:
ERA-Year-Week Number(or month)-Day Number (or date of the month) followed by Time of the Day & Day Name as: 23h 99m 99 s(decimal) - 23:99:99 (Sunday).
The present intant could, therefore, be written as: G.20030905/05:14:28 (Friday) Indian Standard Time
Regards,
Brij Bhushan Vij <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Aa Nau Bhadra Kritvo Yantu Vishwatah -Rg Veda.
*****The New Calendar Rhyme*****
Thirty days in July, September:
April, June, November, December;
All the rest have thirty-one; accepting February alone:
Which hath but twenty-nine, to be (in) fine;
Till leap year gives the whole week READY:
Is it not time to MODIFY or change to make it perennial, Oh Daddy!
And make the calendar work with Leap Week Rule! ***** ***** ***** *****
From: "Bill Potts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [USMA:26841] Re: Pure ISO 8601 or varied for popular formats Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 14:34:40 -0700
I think the explanation is probably fairly simple -- and logical.
In conversation, we rarely need to mention the year. In the absence of the year, the month-day sequence is perfectly logical. It remains logical if, when we add the year, we add it at the beginning.
However, again in conversation, the year is usually added as an afterthought
or as clarification. Where that is the reason, there is no need to put the
year first. Indeed, it would come across as linguistically clumsy. Not only
that, it would deny us the opportunity to emphasize the significant part of
the date.
Let's say I'm reminiscing about a particular July 4th celebration. I want to
put my listener properly in the picture. Do I say the year first or do I
start off with the reference to July 4? (For example, do I say either "I
well remember July 4th, 1995" or "I well remember the fourth of July, 1995,"
or do I say "I well remember 1995, July 4?")
Where the conversational form is written, the name rather than the number of
the month is still used. ISO 8601 quite specifically excludes such forms
from consideration and limits itself to the all-numeric expression of dates
and times, which is the only situation where ambiguity needs to be resolved.
I am happy to adhere strictly to ISO 8601 for all-numeric date references and strongly encourage others to do so. However, for conversational and narrative references (where the name of the month is used), I'm equally happy to follow the same linguistic styles and traditions I use for conversation and narrative prose generally.
This seems to me to be another of those instances where zealotry in pursuit of a standard at all costs will do our cause more harm than good.
Finally, two things:
1. Although ISO 8601 is consistent with the spirit of SI, it has nothing to do with SI.
2. There is no such thing as "Impure ISO 8601." (See subject.)
Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Behalf Of Terry Simpson
>Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 12:38
>To: U.S. Metric Association
>Subject: [USMA:26838] RE: Fw: [ISO8601] Re: Pure ISO 8601 or varied for
>popular formats
>
>
>Han Maenen wrote:
>"the US somehow, "came up with", the month-day-year order"
>
>Actually, I suspect it is like the debate about gallons. There was nobody
>imposing or enforcing standards from above. You can see old examples of the
>mmm d, yyyy format in the UK.
>
>Here is an 1803 example from the archive of the Times (an eminent British
>newspaper).
>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,682,00.html
>
>
>--
>Terry Simpson
>Human Factors Consultant
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>www.connected-systems.com
>Phone: +44 7850 511794
>
>
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