I did some research.
Calendars have always fascinated me. I have read about and played with
calendars for a long time. But since I wanted to be doubly sure and that I
could quote some impeachable sources, I went to my Encyclopaedia
Britannica. The Britannica CD has a lot to say about the calendar and its
history, or rather, their histories as there are a lot of different
calendars. I will not bore you with the details, I will just give you the
following summary.
The Gregorian calendar, which is used throughout the world for business
purposes and is the one we know and use, was based on the Julian calendar,
which was based on. . . and so on and so forth. The Gregorian calendar
was introduced in 1582 by authority of Pope Gregory XIII to correct the
leap year thing amongst other things. The selection of the first day of
the week, however, goes back to a decree by Emperor Constantine in AD 321
when he established the seven-day week in the Roman calendar, and
designated Sunday as the first day of the week. (Previous to this, the
Roman week had eight days, whilst the Babylonians had a seven day week.) No
wonder all the calendars have Sunday as the first day and Saturday as the
last day, though I do have some business calendars with Monday-Friday and
the combined Sat/Sun.
Anyways, all this to say that the debate over whether Sunday is the first
or last day of the week is pointless. Sunday has been the first day of the
week for almost 1700 years. The term week-end by the way, is really
week-ends because it comprises the first and last day of the week.
Now about the ISO 8601 standard. You can find information on the web at
the following address:
http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/comp/Technical/SGML/doc/iso8601/ISO8601.html. This
standard, as Wayne first informed us, defines formats for numerical
representation of dates, times and date/time combinations. Local time and
Coordinated Universal Ticme (UTC) are supported. Dates are for the
Gregorian calendar and can be given in year-month-day. Year-week-day or
year-day formats. Time are in 24hr format.
An ordinal date is identified by a given day in a given year. A week is
identified by its number in a given year. A week begins with a Monday (in
a departure from the Gregorian calendar, my italics) and the first week of
a year is the one which includes the first Thursday, or equivalently the
one which includes January 4.
Back to Britannica CD. The International Fixed Calendar is essentially a
perpetual Gregorian calendar, in which the year is divided into 13 months,
each of 28 days, with an additional day at the end. Present month names
are retained, but a new month named Sol is intercalated between June and
July. The additional day follows December 28 and bears no designation of
month date or weekday name, while the same would be true of the day
intercalated in a leap year after June 28. In this calendar, every month
begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday.
It is claimed that the proposed International Fixed Calendar does not
conveniently divide into quarters for business reckoning, and the World
Calendar is designed to remedy this deficiency, being divided into four
quarters of 91 days each, with an additional day at the end of the year.
In each quarter, the first month is of 31 days and the second and third of
30 days each. The extra day comes after December 30 and bears no month or
weekday designation, nor does the intercalated leap year day that follows
June 30. In the World calendar January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1
are all Sundays. Critics point out that each month extends over part of
five week, and each month within a given quarter begins on a different day.
Nevertheless, both these proposed reforms seem to be improvements over the
present system that contains so many variables.
Well, there you have it folks. The debate over calendars rages on.
Imagine what the impact would be on the computer industry if they decide
to adopt one of the above mentioned calendars. However the nice thing
about standards is that there are so many, and also that they change all
the time. To wit, ISO 8601:1988 supersedes ISO standards 2014, 2015, 2711
3307 and 4031.
Kind regards,
Denys. . .
Denys Beauchemin
Hicomp America, Inc.
[log in to unmask] www.hicomp.com
(800) 323-8863 (281) 288-7438 fax: (281) 355-6879
-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne E. Holt [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 1997 12:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Week Numbers -- A Standard
While every organization may have a rule, or set of rules, for establishing
"week numbers", and these rules are influenced by many factors (including
culture, religion, tradition, and random chance) there is nonetheless an
international standard for the week within the year.
ISO 8601 (1988) establishes standard numerical date/time interchange
formats.
It includes standards for defining date related events (such as leap years,
the first of the week, the first week of the year) as well as the lengths
and names and abbreviations for days, weeks, months and so on. It also
includes standards for expressing dates in uniform interchange formats.
As for the week number:
o Monday is the first day of the week.
o Week 1 of any year is the week that contains 4 January.
Under ISO rules, years are 52 weeks long except when they are 53 weeks
long.
The two exceptions are for common years (365 days) where 1 January falls on
Thursday, or leap years (366 days) where 1 January falls on Wednesday.
weh
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Wayne E. Holt (206) 463-3030 (Voice)
Software Research Northwest, Inc. (206) 463-9393 (FAX)
[log in to unmask] http://www.srn.com/ (206) 463-3555 (BBS)
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