This is a longish posting ... but if you are still reading this
thread, you are probably in it for the long-haul so please read on.
Having started this "ISO-8601 spur" off the main "how do I calculate
the number of the week" thread some 10 days ago, I have been following
the comments with great interest. I have been fascinated by the
ebb and flow of thought related to a single sliver of my original
posting, namely the "Monday is the ISO first day of the week" part.
That focus (first examined by Denys) has led to many facts and
not-so-facts being offered up on calendars which originate at all
points of the compass ... Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Egyptian and
so on ... each with different points of view, historical significance,
and attitude on what is "right".
I have marveled at these many days of comments because, to me,
they dramatically illustrate why ISO-8601 is both essential and
important for international commerce. Mixing metaphors, it is
a Tower of Babel out there with some 40 active calendars in use
today around the world (41 if we count Wirt's Atmarian World Calendar)
and we need a Rosetta Stone.
I smiled when Denys proclaimed that the standard was wrong and
that 1700 years of history had established Sunday as the true first
day of the week. I cheered when Per quietly pointed out that
in his country, Sweden, Monday was the first day of the week and
the calendars were printed that way. And I positively did a
football endzone dance (that's an American football-ism, apologies
to soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) fans, you've got
to see it to believe it but consider it a spirited one-person victory
dance ending in a vigorous pumping of either the right or left arm and
a loudly proclaimed "YES!" through clenched teeth) when Joe told of
his years in the Middle East where the week begins on Saturday.
Been there, done that, brought home the camel saddle.
I encouraged Denys to send a message to the ISO in several offline
messages where I shared some tangental information about calendars
and sources of information on the subject (calendars are something
of a hobby for me, and while collecting a lot of books and articles
over the years I've run across often contradictory data or unverified
gossip ... accurate, unbiased information is often hard to identify).
I did not expect him to get an answer, but if he did get an answer, I
expected it to be a simple statement of what ISO-8601 accomplished and
why the choice of which day was the "first" day was actually unimportant,
as long as everybody agreed on which was first, and that from ISO's
point of view it was OK and in fact quite nice that Denys used Sunday
as the first day of the week WITHIN HIS OWN FRAME OF REFERENCE.
I was horrified by the response Denys got from the ISO. True, the
person giving the answer is from a country where Monday is considered
the first day of the week in the civil calendar, and the people in the
other two countries which passed the message along were also
"Monday-centric". That is no excuse for offering up an answer that
in essence says "well, this is right from my frame of reference,
so it is right". And saying that it is right because the organization
has been preaching it since 1976 is a tad bit ludicrous.
In my mis-spent youth, I consumed more time than was healthy for my
grades, nearly a decade, in the pursuit of fame and glory in forensics,
specifically debate. Key to modern debate (20th century to be exact)
is the premise that participants must argue and adopt the position of
both sides at some point. President Teddy Roosevelt was an outspoken
detractor of such nonsense when it first gained popularity among
colleges, proclaiming that "gentlemen" should only argue their heart-felt
beliefs and ignore the motivations of their opponents. Perhaps this
sheds some light on his presidency, or perhaps, on the presidencies of
those early "both sides" debators who went on to glory. Sigh. It does
cut both ways, doesn't it?
Anyway, using this tissue-thin rationale of nursing both sides along
as my basis for jumping to the defense of ISO-8601, I feel duty-bound
to adopt the ISO side of the debate since they abrogated their obligation
and responsibility to respond authoritatively to Denys' well-intended
protest. In another life, I'll take the other side. Ipso facto, here is
my defense of ISO-8601:
ISO-8601 is an INTERCHANGE standard. It is not intended to dictate
your internal formats or policies regarding expressions of dates or
time, although of course you may choose to use it in that manner. It
exists to allow two disparate parties to exchange precise information
about the date and time of events or transactions, in such a fashion
that both parties know exactly the date and time of an event or
transaction independent of the other party's frame of reference.
Consider two companies, A and B. Company A is located in a country
where the business, religious, and civil week begins on Saturday.
Company B is located in a country where several religions have weeks
which start on different days of the week, but the civil week is
generally accepted to begin on Sunday (the first day of the week
for the dominant religion) and the business week begins on Monday.
Neither country uses the Gregorian calendar.
In the pursuit of commerce, the two companies wish to do business and
must exchange important information with each other: expected date
of manufacture, shipping, delivery, etc. With ISO-8601, each
company is able to tell the other the important details without
fear of misunderstanding. The standard is absolute and deals with
all manner of potential bumps, including time-zone shifting, week
codes, and imprecise time periods.
Neither company gives up their own cultural, religious, or historical
customs as to the nature of their own calendar. For the purpose of
interchange of information, their date/time values are converted to
Gregorian, with ISO rules for day and week values.
Now, why Monday for the first day of the week? Frankly, any day will
do, any day at all. And all seven days can be meaningful as the
first day of the week to someone, somewhere. Most likely, Monday
was selected for its value to the majority of businesses around the
world, with no regard to religious or civil precedence. Why give
credence to any given religious or cultural group? After all, no
matter what you choose someone will be happy and everyone else will
be unhappy.
That's it, in a nutshell. The whole discussion about "what is the
first day of the week" in regards to ISO-8601 was more or less a pleasant
wild goose chase, since THE STANDARD DOESN'T CARE what day is important
to you. The power of the standard is that everyone agrees to talk
within the same frame of reference when exchanging information, even
though it is not necessarily the frame of reference they personally use.
By the way, Denys, happy belated St. Jean-Baptiste Day (Tuesday, June 24th
in Quebec, one of Denys' old stomping grounds). I'm sure it will bring
a smile to your face when I tell you that the calendar I have which
announces this day is one where Monday is in the first column on the
left, and Sunday is in the last column on the right ...
weh
P.S. I have very much enjoyed the interest in the origin of the
calendar(s) we all use and generally take for granted. I
have an unfinished article on the origins of the week which
I might find time to finish sometime this summer. I will
probably get it posted on some website or another, but if
you would like a copy EMAILed to you, just send me a note.
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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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