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Talk:Calendar: Difference between revisions
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→Improving the task description: added my 2¢ worth. -- ~~~~
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While generating a particular year is fine, a Real Programmer would not have written their calendar generator to handle arbitrary widths of display. Instead, it would have either produced for 132-char wide line printers or 80-char wide terminals. In this day and age, nobody's got line printers any more so formatting for an 80-char terminal is what we must put up with. Given that, I propose that the task should state that the calendar should be tested by generating a calendar for the current year suitable for an 80-column device. Adaptation to other widths, other years and other languages are all to be extra-credit items. –[[User:Dkf|Donal Fellows]] 08:36, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
: Note also that the 132-column requirement would fit entirely within the scope of the dual [[CALENDAR]] task. :-) –[[User:Dkf|Donal Fellows]] 08:47, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
:: I disagree about a "Real Programmer" wouldn't have written code to handle arbitrary widths of display terminals. I consider myself a real programmer, and had exposure to different terminals and/or printers. Even if I didn't have that exposure, I still would've written the code to handle various sizes of display and/or different printer widths. Almost all my programs have that type of logic from the get-go, so it makes it much easier to enhance the program when thinking of solving the task problematically. Also, whether line printers are used (printing a line at a time) or those that print a "page" at a time (my laser printer does a "line" at a time even though it may only print part of a line), the printed output still has "lines" (at least, for normal-sized text). Since I wrote the CALENDAR program from ground up, so to speak, the days on the calendar were thought of as a cell with "stuff" in it, such as the day-of-month of course, and optional day-of-year, optional moon phase, and optional highlighting of the "today"'s date, it was easy to code the program to adjust for different size cells, and things like spacing between months and other such niceties, including re-sizing of the cells. [As an aside, the company that I worked for was small enough (about 30 programmers plus support staff), so everyone's birthday was also shown, letting people know that there is cake and ice cream in the breakroom --- but I digress.] Originally, it's primary purpose was to just show the current month's calendar when users logged on (but only when using a display terminal). You couldn't believe the requests for modifications to add this & that to the program by the programmers. The CALENDAR program is in actuality, just a part of my general-purpose "DATE" routine, with the CALendar option as, ... well, an option.
:: I wish the original task had stated the obvious (but didn't) that instead of "a" calender, it would've said a Gregorian calendar. Almost everyone has shown a Gregorian calender, except for those that mixed a Julian calendar with a Gregorian calendar (in a failed attempt to show the "missing days" when (whoever) switched from the Julian calendar to a Gregorian calendar. There are no missing days. When the Gregorian calendar was implemented (wherever the locality), it was designed as being proleptic. That is, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted by a country, the previous day wasn't missing, it just was the previous day, way back to day one of year one (as if the Gregorian calendar had been in effect all the time). -- [[User:Gerard Schildberger|Gerard Schildberger]] 01:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
<br>Below is an extract from the newsgroup bit.listserv.ibm-main (unfortunately, I have lost the author and date it was posted) which addresses the 10 or 11 missing days holy war:
<pre>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Subject: Re: date formats
> Had I thought much about it, I would have hoped, devoutly, that the 'ten
> missing days' had been laid to rest along with discussiom of the Y2K
> problem.
>
> There are no missing days. There are two calendars, the Julian one and the
> Gregorian one.
>
> The Julian one continued in use after the promulgation of the Gregorian
> calendar. It indeed continues to be used today, chiefly by astronomers, who
> measure time in JDs (Julian Days), but also for such specialized purposes as
> calculating the date upon which the Orthodox Christian Churches celebrate
> Easter.
>
> At the point in time at which Pope Gregory XIII's new 'Gregorian' calendar
> came into use in Counter-Reformation Europe the difference between that
> day's Gregorian date and that day's Julian date was indeed ten days. Later,
> it grew larger; and when the British and their then American colonies
> finally abandoned the Julian calendar in 1752 (Julian) for 1752 (Gregorian)
> this gap had widened to 13 days.
>
> To repeat myself now: there is no gap; there are two calendars, the
> difference between which is not constant because of different leap-year
> determination rules.
>
> Moreover, just as there are Julian dates for each day on and after the the
> Gregorian calendar came into use, there are Gregorian dates for each day
> before the Gregorian calendar came into use. (Astronomers sometimes call
> such dates proleptic ones, but they also sometimes reserve the adjective
> 'proleptic' for dates before the epoch origin of a calendar.)
A good exposition of the changeover from Julian to Gregorian calendar
can be found at http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/calendar26.html
This shows the conversion datea for a large number of countries and
territories.
Conversions done in 1582 "lost" ten days, those done in 1752 "lost"
eleven days.
</pre>
The URL still works (albeit it re-directs you to the current URL of:
<br> http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/calendar.html
<br><br>Also, if a Julian calender is going to be mixed with the showing of a Gregorian calendar, it should be so stated The usual nomanclature is to mark the {Julian calendar] date with "OS" [old style]. Some of us older gizzers might remember some calendars that marked George Washington's (1st president of the USA)birthday as one date and another with OS --- this was when it was a legal holiday in some states way back when (also, Thomas Jefferson) --- this was all changed when congress created a "President's day") --- but I digress once again. I was thinking of showing a Mayan calendar mixed with a Gregorian calendar just to show the obvious. Also, if a Julian calendar is going to be shown, then I would like to see
year 4 (as in 4 C.E., for you old gizzers: 4 A.D.) and see if February is a leap year or not. It wasn't.
<br> -- [[User:Gerard Schildberger|Gerard Schildberger]] 01:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
== Calendar versus CALENDAR ==
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