Manipulating Old Dates

[Rob Cozens]

>What do we do with _really_ old dates, like weather logs from California
>missions 300 years ago?
>
>Ideas?

Ken:

So long as we don't predate the Julian calendar, Julian date handler 
support is the first thing that comes to mind...by this I mean 
seven-digit Julian dates (YYYYDDD), not the pre-Y2K five digit 
(YYDDD) variety.

The best solution would be the present Transcript syntax with the 
added smarts to deal with multiple centuries.  I could deal with 
centuryCutoffs if Transcript were smart enough to convert short dates 
with four year digits correctly.  Eg: with default centuryCutoff, 
2/2/94 converts to 1994,2,2....  I would like it to convert 2/2/1694 
to 1694,2,2... and allow "date math" (ie: adding/subtracting seconds, 
minutes, hours, days, months, and years to the appropriate item in 
the dateItem string) across centuries.
-- 

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.net/who.htm

"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."

from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)