DD-MM-YYYY is a logical sequence even if ISO did not choose it. I used it in
the past, but now I am comfortable with YYYY-MM-DD. And I can also write
2002 January 22 for day to day purposes. I have never attacked the
DD-MM-YYYY format, only the sequence that starts with moderately large, then
small, then very large and followed by ante meridiem and post meridiem, as
if people can not count further than 12 and then have to start again.
Han
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ma Be" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, 2002-01-23 04:01
Subject: [USMA:17559] Re: ISO 8601 date format
While Pat's arguments do sound quite... rational/logical, I must also agree
with Jim who's brought a very valid point. Until we undo this messy
business with time reckoning ANY format would be a challenge as far as calcs
are concerned.
Being a computer programmer myself I can talk by experience that it really
doesn't make my life any easier or more difficult if I'm required to work
with a specific ISO format or not. Sure, standardization would be nice when
it comes to seeing the raw data and being able to immediately "interpret"
what it would mean. Therefore, in that regard there might be a case for ISO
format.
But, let's please not make the lives of citizens any more complicated than
it should be. On a personal note, I also favor the dd-mm-yyyy format, like
Jim, for more "practical" reasons, i.e. due to the fact that people worry
more about knowing what day of the month they are at first, THEN the month,
and THEN the year, in this order.
Anyways, as I've already indicated to Gene, Duncan and others here, this
doesn't mean that I would be a "rock in the way" of standardization in this
regard. ;-)
Marcus
On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 15:34:43
Jim Elwell wrote:
At 09:10 AM 1/23/2002 +1100, Pat Naughtin wrote:
To avoid this issue, some people avoid all numeric dates by using number and
letter combinations, such as 4 July 2002 or 7 apr 2002. This technique not
only avoids the issue, but it makes it much more difficult to use a standard
date format in a computer and it makes writing dates less compact...
....
However, others claim that it is possible to be rational when writing dates.
These are the people who say that the date format, yyyy mm dd, is the way to
go.
I have no argument with the order year-month-date, although it seems funny
to me at this time (I've never used it). However, I disagree with part of
what Pat writes.
Using letters for the date is not just to avoid confusion. "Aug" or
"August" is much easier for humans to assimilate than "8" or "08," and
subsequently is less prone to human error.
Furthermore, well-written software does not use any of these formats. It
uses a date code, which is essentially a sequential number from some base
date. The display of the date to the user (on the screen or printed) is
controlled by formatting, but does not change the way the date number is
stored or used for calculations.
Which is why I can tell Excel to use my preferred format ("4 July 2002")
and it has no problem whatsoever properly sorting records by the date, or
calculating the time between dates, etc.
In other words, we do not need to make humans use less-friendly date
formats in order to make life easy on computers.
Jim Elwell
