Re: Holidays in different countries

[Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh farsiweb info>]

On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 21:44 +0200, Denis Jacquerye wrote:
> I really like the idea but it seems like a huge task, at least if you
> really want to have all of the countries and regions' holidays.

Well, we can start small. We will have basic syntax for the holidays in
place, then use the help of the GNOME translation project community and
others

Believe it or not, it also depends on several complicated lower layers,
like implementations of non-Gregorian calendars, which may be even more
complicated than having simple lists of holidays.

> But I don't think it needs to be complete to work. If the data is
> available for one country, the library should use it, if not then
> maybe someone will contribute some data.

Exactly.

> A quick search on some search engine returns Earth Calendar (
> http://www.earthcalendar.net/  ) as a hit. It looks pretty complete,
> unfortunately I have no idea if the data is correct, and it seems
> those days aren't official state holidays all the time (i.e. legal or
> public holiday).

Well, I tried to get holidays for Iran in 2005, and compared it to the
output of my own program (which is checked against the official
calendar). It was more wrong than right:
* It gives me January 1, as the New Year's Day's holiday. We don't
celebrate Gregorian new year in Iran.
* It gives me January 25 for Id Al Adha. It actually was on January 21
this year.
* It gives me February 10 for Islamic New Year. We don't celebrate
Islamic new year in Iran.
* It gives me March 20 as Petroleum Day (actually Nationalization of Oil
Industry), but it happened on March 19 this year.
* It gives me March 21 as Nooruz, which is actually correct this year,
but the Noorus holidays are four days, not one day.
* It gives me April 21 as Birth of the Prophet (Muhammed), but it
actually was April 26 this year.
* It gives me September 1 as Ascension of the Prophet. It's not a
holiday in Iran, and I can't even confirm the date.
* It gives me November 3 as Eid of Fitr. Officially, it is planned to
happen on November 4 this year, but that may change based on
observations.
* It misses 17 other Iranian holidays.

So, in other world, I guess I won't even use it as a source.

> Another good place to look at is of course Wikipedia (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_holidays_by_country ), it seems
> pretty complete too, but once again it doesn't give you the pattern
> right away.

Well, I plan to take a look at many of those pages, but they are not
easy to decipher really. For example, for the case of the United States,
it mixes occasions and holidays. April Fool's Day? United Nations Day?

> I hope this can help you have a better idea of the size of the task.
> Cool idea though.

I know it's large. I don't plan to do it all myself. I was only thinking
about the infrastructure.

> I wonder if the UN has something like that available.

I don't think so. The best bet for this may be airlines and related
companies that provide services for airlines. But that won't be free (or
necessarily accurate).

roozbeh