Re: glib time functions

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* Nils Barth (nils_barth post harvard edu) wrote at 14:01 on 02/12/00:
> Thus spake Ali Abdin:
> > * Nils Barth (nils_barth post harvard edu) wrote at 02:45 on 01/12/00:
> > > Are any other (than emacs/windows) solutions widespread in the Middle East?
> > 
> > Not really. 99.9999% of people (maybe more) have never heard of emacs ;) As
> > far as I know the windows platform is the only Islamic calendar solution for
> > the middle east (and possibly proprietary implementations by consultants,
> > and/or "internal" implementations).
> 
> Hmmm....didn't you say Saudi Arabia uses the Islamic calendar for
> everyday functions/official functions? If so, it must be obnoxious
> changing the date on one's computer every few months (the equivalent
> of the blinking 12:00 on the VCR, eh?).

Well, I haven't lived in Saudi Arabia so I don't know. My understanding is,
Gregorian is used almost all of the time. But "official holidays" are based on
the Islamic calendar
 
> > Also - Islamic calendar is not used for "everyday" work. It is mainly used for
> > religious holidays nowadays. Most people just use Gregorian for everyday use.
> 
> While we're at it, shouldn't we implement Easter too? (and I suppose
> Chinese calender things).

I'm not implementing "holidays" - I'm implementing date functions for the
islamic calendar.

> Also for past dates we'd likely need a lookup table for when the
> months started (in various countries) -- though we'd actually need
> this for past dates in Gregorian in some locales (though only for
> VERY past dates, in general)

Unfortunately, that is not possible because there is no "resource" or
"archive" that lists all the previous years and their ramadan schedule (at
best it only goes back a few years). I think that for previous years we can
just safely  "assume" that we had a normal Ramadan month (i.e. its not early
or late).

Regards,
Ali