On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, F. Alfredo Rego wrote:
 
> >From 3000-L:
> >
> >Yes, as long as six years ago (SIGIMAGE in Reno?) I asked for a date type
> >in IMAGE.  Didn't
> >get much support then.
> >
> >Should this issue be re-opened?
> >
> >Nick Demos  [log in to unmask]
>
>
> I have forwarded Nick's message the the members of the SigIMAGE Executive
> Committee, with this comment:
>
> This sounds like a very interesting (and timely) subject for our meetings
> in Anaheim as well as for the next SigIMAGe newsletter.
 
If the date type would have been standard then people had not overloaded
their date fields.
 
In all IMAGE fields, and queries would be necessary user friendly syntax
for distinguishing,entering and querying non-available and null item values.
 
The DATE type fields perhaps require some more _standardized_ indefinite
values, like NEVER, SOMETIME IN THE PAST, SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE.
 
I mention a not strictly IMAGE but VPLUS problem:
 
The handling of incomplete dates in VPLUS screens are impossible.
I used for convenience the YMD data type for the field "Activity_date".
So the VPLUS could internally check the dates, but I could not allow to
the users enter only year and month of the activity, in case of long
living isotopes.
 
If the DATE type will be standard in IMAGE then the standard should allow
the incomplete dates like year and year+month.
                                              Frank
 
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There are 3 kinds of programming errors:  syntactical, semantical and mystical.
The programmers have to suck up the users just as much as absolutely necessary.