[Developers] Calendar systems

[Kirrily Robert]

On 10/11/07, Alec Flett <alecf at metaweb.com> wrote:
> I have some experience with calendaring, etc, and I'd like to see MQL
> get a better understanding of some calendaring concepts like timezone.

>  From what I understand Kirrily you're pretty familiar with these issues
> - I'm in support of importing as much of the raw standard calendar data
> as we can (i.e. timezones and the like)
>
> Over time I think that we could get MQL to support a richer notion of
> date/time but I think it's important to understand what we want to model
> first...

Jeff P's got some timezone stuff going on using the Olson timezone
database, which I think will work out OK.  IIRC he did it on the
sandbox, though, and it got wiped.

My experience with calendar/time stuff dates back to 2001 or so, when
I was involved in some speculative work towards a calendaring toolkit
for Perl.  Then I found out how hard it was, and mostly since then
I've gibbered and hidden under the desk whenever the topic shows up.
t

When it comes to modelling things, I think it's going to be historical
and cross-cultural events that will show us what we need to do.  Yom
Kippur is one example, but any date between 1582 and 1918 in various
parts of the western world will also trip us, as not all countries had
implemented the Gregorian calendar fixes at that time, and if
something's claimed to have happened on the 1st of June in (eg.)
France, it might be a different date in England.

The thing about dates is that they don't work very well as ordinary FB
types.  I mean, you could set up a type for "Hebrew date" or "French
Revolutionary date" or whatever, but it would lack the validation and
sorting intelligence that the system date/time type has, and sorting
by date is something we seem to do pretty often (or at least I do).

K.


-- 
Kirrily Robert
skud at infotrope.net
http://infotrope.net