[whatwg] [wf2] Leap seconds, dates in the past

[Michel Fortin]

Le 10 avr. 2006 à 7:19, Henri Sivonen a écrit :

> I'm inclined to think that the best option for WF 2.0 is to require  
> the use of the proleptic Gregorian calendar all the way to 0001-01-01.

What about prior dates?

Should Web Forms use the astronomical convention which has the year  
zero or the historical one where there is no year zero? According to  
Wikipedia, year zero exists in ISO 8601:2004, so do negative years.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Dates>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_year_numbering>

Personally, I'd go proleptic Gregorian all the way with year zero and  
negative years. That shouldn't prevent a user agent from displaying  
the date using another calendar when appropriate. It could be  
misleading however when dating historical events or similar things.  
Maybe there should be a way to specify the calendar the date uses  
when it's not Gregorian.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/