Re: The Emacs Calculator and calendar

[Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> Maybe you were talking about that limit, but the discussion clearly
> referred to dates up to 1752.

Is really "ancient history" a common term to refer to history a couple
of centuries back?

Also, why 1752? If we're talking about non-English-speaking countries,
the Gregorian calendar was adopted by Spain, Portugal, Italy and
Poland in 1582.

Anyway, count me in Paul's side on this. References to past calendars
in "contemporary" style are a deep pit of vagueness and
misunderstandings. It's common to see ancient Roman dates as AUC ("ab
urbe condita", from the founding of the city), a calendar which the
Romans didn't use, or only very occasionally. And we talk of year 10
or 20 or 100 AC (Julian or Gregorian) but no one at the time would
have understood that, It's a system devised in the 6th century and
used mainly from 9th on.

It makes a bit more sense to use Julian to refer to post-medieval
dates, but even in this case, conversion is not automatic unless you
specify the place. If you're reading a Russian book using the Julian
calendar, it's simpler to know that there is a 13 days difference with
the current reckoning that to use a program to convert dates back and
forth, don't you think?

My 2/86400 of solar day,

    Juanma