Re: Text collation

[Kevin Ryde]

Carl Witty <address@hidden> writes:
>
> If I understand correctly, this would make date->julian-day (for
> instance) convert from Julian calendar dates before 1582 and Gregorian
> calendar dates after 1582.

Yes.

> This is cute, but I don't think it's particularly useful;

Apart from being what people actually used then!

> the problem is that the Julian to Gregorian switch
> lasted for hundreds of years around the world (and, indeed, some
> churches still use the Julian calendar to determine religious dates), so
> you can't tell if a date is Julian or Gregorian just by looking at the
> year.

Yes, the switch happened at different times, but if you're calling it
gregorian then it makes some sense to go with the date pope gregory
signed off on :).  It could get some localization perhaps, though that
sounds like hard work.  I think the gnu "cal" program does that.

> I would propose leaving the code the way it is now, and changing
> the note to something like "Note: Dates in this module use the proleptic
> Gregorian calendar,

If the srfi author wanted to clarify that then it'd be ok, otherwise
surely a calendar with at least some sort of historical basis is more
use.