Re: GNU glibc locales and CLDR Questions ...

[Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simos Xenitellis wrote on 2005-03-04 16:42 UTC:
> b. European Standard 28601

Only the final draft version of the most recent ISO version of the same
thing can be found on the net, e.g. there's temporarily a copy on:

  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/ISO-8601:2004.pdf

A summary is on

  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

EN 28601 is identical (except for a change of font) with an older
version of ISO 8601 standard. The differences are minor.

> > Exercise: When is 12:00 AM today?
> That was about 4 hours and a half ago.

You may find, that a slight majority of users of the 12-h notation would
disagree. I believe that most C libraries print midnight as 12:00 AM in
strftime(), because it will be followed by 12:01 AM (i.e., the AM/PM
transition coincides with the 11->12 transition).

The underlying problem is that, in the 12-h notation, there is no really
clear way to distinguish between 00:00 (midnight at the start of day),
12:00 (noon) and 24:00 (midnight at the end of the day). Even if you
used the cumbersome "12 noon" versus "12 midnight" notation often seen
in the US, you still can't distinguish between 00:00 and 24:00.

With the 24-h notation, however, there is no ambiguity, 24:00 today is
the same as 00:00 tomorrow. In addition, it is simpler, compacter (fewer
characters), and easier to compare and calculate with, both for humans
and computers. It's the way to go, independent of your language or
nationality!

Markus


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