Re: The Emacs Calculator and calendar

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Edward Reingold <address@hidden> writes:

>
> On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Jay Belanger <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>     So, for example, the day before September 14, 1752 is
>     September 2, 1752 according to Calc and September 13, 1752 according
>     to the calendar.
>    
>     Is this acceptable, or should they be made consistent?
>
> I would say it even more strongly: the Unix cal and the Emacs calc are
> foolish chimeras; there were hundreds of different dates of adoption
> of the Gregorian calendar, stretching almost 400 years.  Emacs
> calendar does the only sane thing.

Indeed, it's perfectly acceptable, and probably preferable to just give
the Gregorian dates.

If you want to be more exact, you need not only to specify a calendar
from the date and location (including the planet), but also political or
religious power you're abiding to, and even with that, we lack a lot of
information given that a lot of calendars were relative (to the reign of
the current monarch, or the foundation of the local city), and that we
may not have all the information needed to synchronize them.

What would be the birth date of Cochise's great great great grand
father?  I mean, assuming you know how many seconds ago he was born, it
was before the Americas went under the political power of European
countries.  Each tribe had its own moon names, I don't know if they even
had absolute year counters.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.