Alternative calendars and holidays, moon phases etc. Was: announce: www-rdf-calendar mailing list

(Subject fixed)

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Danny Ayers wrote:

> I think there's a very good point here - this calendar business has been in
> use for millennia by umpteen religions, based largely on solar and/or lunar
> cycles. This could well be a good starting point - either that or something
> like the Java 2 calendar model. Being able to give in your local religion,
> or rather your locale, and the system being aware of the implications would
> be very useful - for example here in Sri Lanka full moon (Poya) days are
> holidays, much like Sunday in the UK, except more things are shut.
>
> BTW, Happy New Year!
>
> (this weekend is Sinhalese & Tamil New Year ;-)

A distinction needs to be drawn between the user interface, any agent
assisting the user in scheduling appointments, etc, and protocols and
data models underlying any calendaring system(s).

Assuming for the moment that we can agree on an absolute epoch and
measure time objectively from it (we don't routinely travel at
relativistic speeds WRT each other, so this assumption holds), I'd
suggest for sanity's sake that we pick on one and stick with it.

True, calendaring apps/agents need to know when the sun comes up where
you live, your working days, when the local holidays are, etc, but there
are already a host of apps out there for calculating these sorts of
things. In conjunction with a system to allow an external entity (eg,
the place you work?) to add additional "unavailable" slots (eg,
unavailable due to: time off granted for all staff) and/or the notion of
an agent that does this for you, this kind of stuff is pretty
straightforward. But it needs punting to the application level.

In a single sentence:
Attempting to teach a calendaring _protocol_ about local holidays is
pointless because such notions should be subsumed in a more general
mechanism for deferring the management of your available time, etc, to
external agents.

jan "imho" grant

-- 
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287163 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 RFC822 jan.grant@bris.ac.uk
I am now available for general use under a modified BSD licence.

Received on Thursday, 12 April 2001 08:48:01 UTC