Re: Re: Week number

Jim Mercer writes:

> most western calendars that i have seen show "Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat".

Most *English* calendars you have seen, I suppose.  In Germany there is no
such possible calendar.  If you printed a calendar that way, it would be
considered a printo.  The same is true in most parts of the continent.

The POSIX numbering (0-6) is actually pretty slick because it allows both
versions to work:  In the U.S. (e.g.) you get a natural order starting at
0, in Germany (e.g.) you get Monday as #1.

> so, suffice to say, there is no "proper" first day of the week.

There is a proper ISO first day of the week.  In many parts of Europe, the
day of the week + week of the year are real, official concepts.  E.g., you
would mark business transactions as "week x, day y" instead of with a date
(notice how this simplifies arithmetic).  Without trying to push through
my cultural bias, I think these applications should have some priority
over making up a solution that satisfies everybody but doesn't actually
suit any real application.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut      peter_e@gmx.net       http://yi.org/peter-e/