From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Paul Eggert Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: The Emacs Calculator and calendar Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2012 00:50:33 -0700 Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: <50713449.3010306@cs.ucla.edu> References: <87y5jk3f7d.fsf@gmail.com> <5070AB89.4090900@cs.ucla.edu> <831uha7pq9.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1349596238 26635 80.91.229.3 (7 Oct 2012 07:50:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2012 07:50:38 +0000 (UTC) Cc: jay.p.belanger@gmail.com, reingold@iit.edu, rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 07 09:50:44 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TKldK-0003zG-87 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 07 Oct 2012 09:50:42 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:44334 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TKldE-0006aA-53 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 07 Oct 2012 03:50:36 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:39704) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TKldB-0006a4-HF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 07 Oct 2012 03:50:34 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TKldA-0004Tk-MB for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 07 Oct 2012 03:50:33 -0400 Original-Received: from smtp.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.62]:51305) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TKld8-0004TX-Vf; Sun, 07 Oct 2012 03:50:31 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C6ADA60002; Sun, 7 Oct 2012 00:50:30 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at smtp.cs.ucla.edu Original-Received: from smtp.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id zBe1zMQ16TTk; Sun, 7 Oct 2012 00:50:29 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from [192.168.1.3] (pool-108-23-119-2.lsanca.fios.verizon.net [108.23.119.2]) by smtp.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 78932A60001; Sun, 7 Oct 2012 00:50:29 -0700 (PDT) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120912 Thunderbird/15.0.1 In-Reply-To: <831uha7pq9.fsf@gnu.org> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 131.179.128.62 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:154160 Archived-At: On 10/06/2012 11:36 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2012 15:07:05 -0700 >> From: Paul Eggert >> >> Almost nobody who writes about ancient history specifies dates in the >> calendars that were used at the time. > > Maybe in English-speaking countries. Try reading Russian history > books, and you will see old dates right up to 1918. I was talking about ancient history, which ended circa 500. When Russians write about ancient history, they typically don't use the same calendars that the ancients did. They may use the old (1700-1918) Russian calendar, but that's not the same thing. > There are other special cases, some generalization is > possible. In theory yes, but it's not practical. There are too many special cases. And too many of these special cases are undocumented: we simply don't know which calendar was used when and where. For example, modern historians who write about Caesar's death usually write in terms of the Julian calendar in effect at the time. But this differs from Julian calendar that Emacs implements. Caesar was killed on March 15 in the Julian calendar of the time, and this is probably (though not certainly) March 14 of the Emacs Julian calendar. (I write "not certainly" because some of the details of the old Julian calendar were lost and have not been reconstructed to everybody's satisfaction.)