From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue Dec 06 2005 - 19:13:04 CST
From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
> At 02:50 +0300 2005-12-07, Bashar wrote:
>>off topic question, why its mm/dd/yy and not dd/mm/yy (or yyyy) in the US
>>too (or is it in Europe and other part of the world except arab world) ?
>
> It doesn't matter. The question is whether the US locale should be
> mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy. I think it should be the latter.
> --
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
Why is that choice between 2-digits and 4-digits years specific to the
English US locale? Idon't see the rationale, given that the same decision
would be true for all English locales, and all European locales as well, or
alllocales that use the Gregorian calendar (in fact all countries given that
this calendar is a international standard, used worldwide).
My opinion is that if one needs to be precise, only the ISO format should be
used for normative purposes (i.e. the "yyyy-mm-dd" format). It remains that
2-digit years will still be used for long, in contexts where it often does
not create confusion about which century is implied, incountries that have
used it since long. So may be you would change the "short" format to use
4-digits years, and one could still justify the use of a "tiny" format with
2-digits years.
My preference for localized date formats generally goes for the so-called
"Oracle" format which is even less ambiguous ("dd-mmm-yyyy" or
"yyyy-mmm-dd", such as "2005-jan-01" using localized abbreviated month
names), and using the ISO format (starting by the 4-digits year) for
locale-neutral dates.
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