Re: Japanese expression of date (Re: use of locale in "ls")

[Tomohiro KUBOTA]

Hi,

At Tue, 18 Dec 2001 17:04:28 -0800 (PST),
Paul Eggert wrote:

> As you mention, the natural way to write Gregorian dates in Japanese
> is '1981YY7MM14DD' -- or '7MM14DD' if it's a date in this year.  None
> of the above commands output dates in the natural format: they are all
> "wrong", one way or another.  However, the posix-iso format does have
> two advantages over the others: it alone uses the proper time stamp
> order for Japan, and it consumes the fewest display columns (which is
> becoming more important as file names get longer :-).

I imagine Solaris way is a compromise to keep same column location
of month/date with recent files.  Though it is not ideal, I accept it.

BTW, I am now asking this point at Slashdot Japan.
http://slashdot.jp/article.pl?sid=01/12/19/1535221&mode=thread
and found I have forgot one point.

When we use '1981YY 7MM 14DD' format (YY, MM, and DD are ideogram
to express unit for year, month, and day), we should also use units
for hour and minute.

However, usage of all of these units can lead to bulky date expression
and then we can accept '1981/7/14 11:59' format.  Note that '7/14'
can also OK but '7/14/1981' and '14/7/1981' are NG.  '7/14    1981'
may be OK if readers feel '7/14' and '1981' is not a continuing
expression.

One opinion was the usage of ISO format '1981-07-14' and '07-14'.
However, I feel '1981-07-14' is acceptable but '07-14' is NG.

A report says that IRIX uses all of these units for year, month,
day, hour, and minute.

A opinion says that if you have some question on Solaris you should
ask for Sun people, since Sun is friendly for open source world.

In my opinion, IRIX and Solaris styles are acceptable.  1981/7/14
format is also good.

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <address@hidden>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/
"Introduction to I18N"  http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/