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Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 23:45:37 +0000
To: "Delphi ~EFG Labs ~Earl F Glynn II" <efg2@efg2.com>
From: "Ian Galpin" <g1smd@amsat.org>
Subject: [ODP] Delphi Dates and Times [Computer Lab Feedback].
Message-ID: <E16UH08-0001uh-00@scrabble.freeuk.net>
Status: U

[2002-Jan-25]


Hi,
  I am the new Editor for the ISO 8601 Standard section
of the Open Directory Project (ODP) located at:
 <http://dmoz.org/Science/Reference/Standards/Individual_Standards/ISO_8601/>.

I have recently found your web site at:
 <http://homepages.borland.com/efg2lab/Library/Delphi/DatesAndTimes/>
Delphi Dates and Times, while looking for ISO 8601
material to include in the ODP database.


I see that you include many links to various date and time
resources, including a few that cover the ISO 8601 date
and time standard.

There are many places with information about the ISO 8601
standard. I hope that you can provide a few links to them
from somewhere on your own web site.

Perhaps you could add a link to the Open Directory Project
site, as mentioned above. In addition, please review the
list of links on the ODP site, and make a copy of any that
you would like to include on your own web site.


Here are a few others that you may find useful:

Discussion About the ISO 8601 Standard (YahooGroups):
 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iso8601/>.

Implementation of the ISO 8601 Standard around the world -
a list of countries around the world that have adopted the
ISO 8601 standard:
 <http://www.qsl.net/g1smd/isoimp.htm>.

ISO 8601 Dates: What They Are and Why They're Good -
University of Illinois at Chicago in USA:
 <http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/software/isodates/isocontents.html>.

Using the ISO Date Format on Personal Computers:
 <http://www.its.monash.edu.au/twp/windows/isodate/>.

Date and Time - Week Numbers - by Peter J Haas in Germany:
 <http://home.t-online.de/home/PeterJHaas/DateTime/WeekNumber_en.htm>.

Date and Time on the Internet - Timestamps - Chris Newman:
<http://community.roxen.com/developers/idocs/drafts/draft-ietf-impp-datetime
-05.html>.

International Standard Date and Time Notation - by Markus Kuhn.
 <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html>.

Info on ISO 8601, the date and time representation standard:
 <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/iso8601.html>.

Setting up your PC to use the Year-Month-Day date format:
 <http://metric1.org/windtset.htm>.

Setting up your Mac to use the Year-Month-Day date format:
 <http://metric1.org/macdtset.htm>.

International Date Format Campaign - by Steve Adams:
 <http://www.saqqara.demon.co.uk/datefmt.htm>.

ISO 8601 Date and Time - Converting and Implementing:
 <http://www.pvv.org/~nsaa/ISO8601.html>.

ISO 8601 Date/Time Representations - A simple introduction
to ISO 8601 date and time formats - University of Wellington
in New Zealand:
 <http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/technical/software/SGML/doc/iso8601/ISO8601.html>.
[This is one of the 'original' ISO 8601 documents, one of
the very first web sites that ever mentioned the standard].

Discussion of formats for expressing dates, with particular
reference to the ISO 8601 date format - by Peter Meyer:
 <http://serendipity.magnet.ch/hermetic/cal_stud/formats.htm>.

W3C Date and Time Formats - A Note concerning usage of ISO 8601
on the Internet - by Misha Wolf and Charles Wicksteed:
 <http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime>.

ISO Date/Time Formats:
 <http://www.lise.jp/datetime.html>.

Standards for Representing Dates - University of California at Berkeley:
 <http://y2k.berkeley.edu/computers/fixpcs/issues/date-standards.html>.

The Best Of Dates, The Worst Of Dates:
 <http://www.exit109.com/~ghealton/y2k/yrexamples.html>.

ISO 8601: the Right Format for Dates:
 <http://www.uic.edu/year2000/datefmt.html>.

Writing for an International Readership:
 <http://www.betweenborders.com/international/>.

The Mathematics of the ISO 8601 Calendar:
 <http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/calendar/isocalendar.htm>

Finally, proof that ISO 8601 reaches the parts that
other date formats just cannot reach:
 <http://www.marsengineering.com/Calendar/Formats.asp>.


This standard calls for the date to be shown using
YYYY-MM-DD, Year-Month-Day. So 2001-02-03 will
always mean 2001-Feb-03. There is no-one on the
entire planet using YYYY-DD-MM, so only YYYY-MM-DD
can be the correct interpretation.

The standard was adopted in the US as ANSI X3.30
and NIST FIPS 4-1, and gradually spread around
most the world. Certainly all of Europe, Canada,
South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China,
Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, India, and many other
places have now also adopted it.

The new style date retains the original mm/dd
ordering to be found in old style US dates,
merely moving the Year to the front whilst
changing it to always use the full four digits.

This date format features in many of the various
XML schema definitions now appearing, and has
been used by some parts of NASA and IBM on web
sites for a long time; for example at:
  <http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/>.

Maybe I can persuade you to adopt this format,
or something close, either:
  2001-02-03   or   2001-Feb-03
on your web site, in place of the format that you
are currently using.


Cheers,

Ian.


<mail://g1smd@amsat.org>

<http://www.qsl.net/g1smd/>
<http://home.freeuk.net/g1smd/>
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dstrange/y2k.htm>
<http://dmoz.org/Science/Reference/Standards/Individual_Standards/ISO_8601/>

<ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/ham/misc/g1smd.zip>
<ftp://ftp.qsl.net/pub/g1smd/>


[2002-01-25]

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