Jim Mercer writes:
> most western calendars that i have seen show "Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat".
Most *English* calendars you have seen, I suppose. In Germany there is no
such possible calendar. If you printed a calendar that way, it would be
considered a printo. The same is true in most parts of the continent.
The POSIX numbering (0-6) is actually pretty slick because it allows both
versions to work: In the U.S. (e.g.) you get a natural order starting at
0, in Germany (e.g.) you get Monday as #1.
> so, suffice to say, there is no "proper" first day of the week.
There is a proper ISO first day of the week. In many parts of Europe, the
day of the week + week of the year are real, official concepts. E.g., you
would mark business transactions as "week x, day y" instead of with a date
(notice how this simplifies arithmetic). Without trying to push through
my cultural bias, I think these applications should have some priority
over making up a solution that satisfies everybody but doesn't actually
suit any real application.
--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net http://yi.org/peter-e/
