Re: date formats - mm/dd vs dd/mm

>>>>> "Tommi" == Tommi Nieminen <tommiDOTnieminen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Tommi> The American system (claimed to be neither "right" nor
Tommi> "wrong") has spread abroad because of software
Tommi> (applications or programming libraries) that haven't been
Tommi> localised before export. Thus, you can encounter "American"
Tommi> dates elsewhere too.

Not necessarily. With computer-human interface improving, more and
more systems are better localized than before. In Europe, I seldom
see the American date notation. All the computer generated documents
and screens show it in the European format: DD.MM.YY (they like to use
dot as the field separator). Properly localized softwares for
continental Europe also use "." as the thousand-separator and "," as
the decimal 'point'. Nowadays, only well internationalized and
localized software could be successful, whether it's commercial or
free (see the GNU tools and other GPL-licensed softwares, which
usually support much more languages (usually including even
Esperanto!) and locales than many commercial vendors).

Further, there is an ISO standard for date notation, and guess what!
This standard follows the Chinese/Oriental order: YYYY-MM-DD. I think
this is because sorting dates becomes 'easier' (just string
comparison) with this format.



--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
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