Re: [gtk-list] adding date/time calculations to glib

["Shawn T . Amundson" <amundson gimp org>]

On Wed, Oct 07, 1998 at 02:44:20PM -0500, Jon Trowbridge wrote:
> I would like to propose that code for doing date and time calculations
> be added to glib.

I've given some thought to this recently, with the addition of 
gtkcalendar to gtk.

The best C library I've found for this is from the Perl DateCalc 
module.  The author based the Perl code on C code which has a 
nice interface, and would be easy to work into glib.  This can
be found in libgnome/lib_date.[ch] (you might want to make sure
this is most current).

One issue with lib_date is it is not internationalized.  That's fixable.
The month_length and day_name variables should be functions.

-Shawn


>      
> This is one area where it seems like all sorts of different free
> programs are constantly reinventing the wheel.  For example, gncal and
> gnumeric are both using different pieces of code to do basic
> calculations like the number of days in a month, mapping mm/dd/yyyy
> dates to julian dates, extracting dates from strings, calculating days
> of the week, etc.
>      
> I'm now in a position where a few different free software projects
> (guppi, gtk--plot and goose) that I'm working on are also going to
> need to do date calculations.  Rather than just cutting and pasting
> the same old code into these projects, I think that we would all be
> best served if some common code to provide this functionality was set
> up.
>      
> To this end, I'm volunteering to do the work necessary to add this
> code to glib.  I'd probably use timeutil.{c,h} from gncal as the basis
> for it, but with improvements and changes to fit it into glib's naming 
> and coding conventions.  gncal and gnumeric (as well as any other
> existing code that deals with dates and times) would hopefully be
> switched over to using the new glib code, but this wouldn't have to
> happen right away.
>     
> -JT
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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--
Shawn T. Amundson               
amundson@gimp.org               http://www.gimp.org/~amundson

"The assumption that the universe looks the same in every
 direction is clearly not true in reality." - Stephen Hawking