Re: Republic of Ireland - Date and Time Formats

I am forwarding this message, with his permission, from Michael Everson,
who is the last word on anything i18n and Ireland related.

----- Forwarded message from Michael Everson -----

Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 22:29:42 +0100

In the first place, the official name of the country is "Ireland", 
not "Republic of Ireland", which is a football team. Popup lists 
should list only "Ireland"

>1) I would really appreciate it if you help us clarify and validate "Date and
>Time Display Formats" for the Republic of Ireland. We found different
>information that shows different ways of diplaying date and time in 
>English and Irish.  The following is the information that we found. 
>Could you please
>validate if the following information is correct?
>
>Time Patters
>(Republic_Ireland_English)

Recte (Ireland_English)

>Full  Time:   8.36.11 o'clock pmPDT
>Long Time:  8.36.11 pm PDT
>Medium Time:   8.36.11 pm
>Short Time:   8.36 pm
>
>Time Patters
>(Irish)
>Full Time 8:36:11 o'clock PM PDT
>Long time 8:36:11 PM GMT
>Medium   8:36:11 PM
>Short 8:36 PM

Good heavens no. The Government recommendation (via the Department of 
Finance to our national character set committee, of which I am 
convenor) is that the 24-hour clock be used. For that you can follow 
the ISO standard, with leading zeros and colons and no "o'clock" and 
no "AM/PM" or "am/pm" or "r.n./in." (which can be used in Irish. 
Ireland doesn't use PDT, either, if this means Pacific Daylight Time! 
So for Ireland_English and Ireland_Irish the date formats will be 
numeric and identical. Note that Irish is also spoken in the United 
Kingdom, so you need to differentiate them. (Why? Because at the very 
least, currency locales will be different until the UK joins the euro 
zone.)

>Date Patterns
>(Republic_Ireland_English)
>Full Date:  Thursday, 26 August, 2001

No comma between August and 2001

>Long Date:  26 August 2001
>Medium Date:  26-Aug-01

No, this should be 26 Aug 2001

>Short Date: 26/8/01

The Government recommends the ISO standard for numeric dates as well, 
2001-08-26.

>Date Patters
>(Irish)
>Full Date: Déardaoin, Lúnasa 26, 2001

Déardaoin, 26 Lúnasa 2001

>Long Date: Lúnasa 26, 2001

26 Lúnasa 2001

>Medium Date: Lun-26-01

26 Lún 2001. You misspelled this here; your list of names and 
abbreviations needs to be checked, because three-letter truncation is 
not allowed for day names or month names.

>Short Date: 8/26/01

2001-08-26

>2) We found information on The Revenue and Social Insurance (RSI) number that
>is assigned to all people legally working in Ireland.  But we could not find
>information of the format of this Identification Number. Is it Alphanumeric or
>Numeric? How many characters?

Ah, it is alphanumeric. It is now called the PPI number or something 
like that, something about personal public insurance. I am not sure, 
and am on a plane to the States right now so will not be able to 
check. The format is 7 digits and a capital letter, no hyphens or 
spaces: 1234567T
-- 
Michael Everson

----- End of forwarded message from Michael Everson -----

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
	--Douglas Hofstadter

Received on Saturday, 11 August 2001 16:49:47 UTC