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: Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:34:47 -0700 Message-ID: <50732AD7.8000003@cs.ucla.edu> References: <87y5jk3f7d.fsf@gmail.com> <87626md8aj.fsf@Rainer.invalid> <83vcem6592.fsf@gnu.org> <5071E6E7.7080906@cs.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1349724906 32042 80.91.229.3 (8 Oct 2012 19:35:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2012 19:35:06 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Oct 08 21:35:12 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 1TLJ6Y-0008K8-Av for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 08 Oct 2012 21:35:06 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:49661 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TLJ6S-0004Fm-6u for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:35:00 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:43075) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TLJ6P-0004Fg-Oy for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:34:58 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TLJ6O-00078o-Ql for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:34:57 -0400 Original-Received: from smtp.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.62]:58193) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TLJ6O-00078k-Io; Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:34:56 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id BB69E39E8109; Mon, 8 Oct 2012 12:34:55 -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 m95dB4dF0jzS; Mon, 8 Oct 2012 12:34:55 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from penguin.cs.ucla.edu (Penguin.CS.UCLA.EDU [131.179.64.200]) by smtp.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 33AD639E8106; Mon, 8 Oct 2012 12:34:55 -0700 (PDT) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120911 Thunderbird/15.0.1 In-Reply-To: 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:154245 Archived-At: On 10/08/2012 06:39 AM, Richard Stallman wrote: > For Los Angeles you could probably understand everything using the > "Spain" jurisdiction. After 1556 yes, but before that the Spanish variant of the Julian calendar is probably not what users want. And Los Angeles is an easy case. Often it's harder. Would we ask Budapest users to manually switch among all the jurisdictions that have controlled that city: "Hungarian", "Romanian", "Austro-Hungarian", "Habsburg", "Ottoman", "Angevin", etc., etc.? That'd be even more work for Budapest users than what we have now, where they just pick the calendar they want. > What did Russia do for a calendar before 1700? It was a mess. Partly it used the Byzantine calendar, where the year before 1700 AD was 7207 AM (and it was a short year -- four months long). But medieval Rus also used at least two other calendars, which were similar to the Byzantine but which started the year at different dates. > And what do modern historians use when writing dates for > that period? It depends. You have to check. I just did a Google Books search for chronologies of medieval Russia and examined the first book I found, and it says on pages xii-xiii that it uses Gregorian for everything. But Julian is also common. The book I checked was: Langer LN, Historical Dictionary of Medieval Russia, Scarecrow Press (2002), ISBN 0-8108-4080-4.