RE: Internal inconsistency wrt year 0000

> Our current thinking is that ISO 8601 is in error and we want to request
> a change disallowing the year 0000.
>
> You said:
>> Now the year 1BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar is a leap year.
>
> Where can I confirm this information?  We've been worrying about a
> related change in the comparison of durations that is affected by this
> information.

If you start from first principles, I think this has to be the case.  The 
purpose of leap years in a calendar is to ensure that the mean length of a 
year in the calendar is as close as possible to the length of the solar 
tropical year.  This requires that the calendar have a regular cycle. The 
cycle of the Gregorian calendar is 400 years.  The year 400AD is a leap 
year. The year 1BC immediately precedes 1AD and so is 400 years before 
400AD. Therefore 1BC must also be a leap year.  In other words, if 1BC was 
not a leap year, there would be a discontinuity in the proleptic Gregorian 
calendar for which there is no justification.  I did a bit of googling and 
found the following:

http://www.bluewaterarts.com/calendar/InterGravissimas.htm  (translation of 
Papal Bull establishing the Gregorian calendar)
http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Proleptic+Gregorian+Calendar
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/hermetic/cal_stud/cal_art.htm#Astronomical
http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html

As regards the the year 0000 issue, everything I have found on the Web 
suggests that ISO 8601 is correct, and that the year -1 corresponds to 2 BC 
not 1 BC.  There are two ways to number years:

-2, -1, 0, 1, 2
3 BC, 2 BC, 1 BC, 1 AD, 2 AD

but never

-2, -1, 1, 2

In addition to the above see:

http://webexhibits.org/calendars/year-definitions.html
http://www.znaturforsch.com/df/gc.htm
http://www.maa.mhn.de/Scholar/calendar.html
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-christian.html

I have never found anything that suggests that the year -1 corresponds to 1 
BC in the Gregorian calendar.

James

> All the best, Ashok
> ===========================================================
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Clark [mailto:jjc@jclark.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 6:30 AM
> To: www-xml-schema-comments@w3.org
> Subject: Internal inconsistency wrt year 0000
>
> The inconsistency between XML Schema Part 2 and ISO 8601:2000 wrt year
> 0000
> has already been commented on, but there is also a minor internal
> inconsistency.  XML Schema Part 2 disallows year 0000, which means that
> year -0001 corresponds to 1BC (whereas in ISO 8601:2000, 1BC is year
> 0000).
> Now the year 1BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar is a leap year.
> However, appendix E uses the formula
>
>   modulo(Y, 400) = 0 OR (modulo(Y, 100) != 0) AND modulo(Y, 4) = 0
>
> to determine whether Y is a leap year.  But this formula makes year
> -0001
> not a leap year.  If year 0000 was allowed (representing 1BC), then the
> formula would be correct.
>
> James
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 23 April 2002 22:34:49 UTC