time, calendar, datetime, etc

[John Roth]

"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.1059967687.8907.python-list at python.org...
> [Dan Bishop]
> >>> There were no leap years between 10 BC and AD 4, because after
> >>> Julius Caesar's death, the priests in charge of the calendar
> >>> mistakenly added leap days every 3 years instead of 4, and this had
> >>> to be corrected.
> >>>
> >>> I wouldn't expect the datetime module to deal with that, though ;-)
>
> [Tim]
> >> Thank you -- some people did <wink>.
>
> [John Roth]
> > I don't think I noticed that:
>
> Were you a participant in datetime's design process (the fishbowl on
> zope.org, previously referenced)?  If so, sorry, I don't recall it.

No. I didn't even know about it until recently.

> > the entire point behind the proleptic calender is that you're
> > projecting the current practice back to times where they weren't
> > doing it that way.
>
> And forward too, of course.  But not everyone *wanted* a proleptic
calendar
> (of any flavor).  The use cases on the datetime wiki turned out not to
care
> either way (business uses generally don't give a rip about years before
> 1900), so I pushed for the conceptual simplicity of the proleptic
Gregorian
> (which coincides with current reckoning in much of the world, so satisfied
> the use cases).

And I agree with that reasoning. There's no way that the module
core can deal with historical and other cultural dates in any consistent
or comprehensive fashion, so it shouldn't waste effort and try. On the
same token, though, it shouldn't get in the way of people who want to
extend it to handle additional calendar types, or bring dates back before
1AD.

> > That's clearly an opportunity for someone to add an extension -
> > except that there are other problems in that era, and the lack
> > of leap years is the least of them.
>
> People who care can scratch their own itches.

Exactly.

John Roth
>
>