I agree with Iljitsch's earlier point: In this day and age, if one is
not sure how to interpret 2010-01-02 at first glance, he should have no
trouble figuring it out right away. We would expect people who are
interested in IETF material to have the curiosity to find out, wouldn't
we?
What I am not so sure about is the sweeping statement that Americans
would likely have difficulties with the 'yyyy-mm-dd' format. I walked
around the office and polled seven of my co-workers who happen to be
around (all engineers by trade, five 'natives'), all seven (eight
including me) _know_ what it means.
Microsoft Windows already allow options to customize 'short date'
presentation in all locales that I spot-checked, one of them is
'yyyy-mm-dd'.
Perhaps this really is a non-issue after all?
Jerry
--
Jerry Huang, AT&T Labs, +1 630 719 4389
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf
Of
Iljitsch van Beijnum
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 11:19
To: MEMcNeil(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com
Cc: Yao Jiankang; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org Discussion
Subject: Re: What day is 2010-01-02
On 17 mrt 2010, at 17:02, Michael Edward McNeil wrote:
(Although the exposure to non-standard ways of doing things may
make this
harder for Americans.)
Since Americans habitually use month-day order anyway, why would
YYYY-MM-
DD be especially difficult for them? It's Europeans and others who
typically use day-month order that would seem likely to incur
difficulties -
- except that putting the year first is a pretty glaring clue that the
order
shouldn't be regarded as it usually is for them.
Absolutely. But Americans don't expect this kind of stuff to make
sense,
because they're used to having a different way of measuring
everything,
while in the rest of the world we're used to the metric system so we
assume
things make sense. So an American wouldn't necessarily consider
yyyy-dd-mm
inconceivable while people from elsewhere probably would and just
assume
yyyy-mm-dd.
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