[Dev] Date / Time types

[Ken Krugler]

Hi Ted,

>Donn's note about the content model spurred me into action...   At 
>the moment, we are using the eGenix mxDateTime libraries to provide 
>the date and time types in the repository.  For several releases 
>we've been saying that we need to really settle on what our 
>requirements for date and time are going to be.  The 0.5 release is 
>probably the right time frame to do this and make any changes.
>
>I'd like to try and assemble the basic requirements/feedback/etc 
>from various stakeholders.   As far as I know, that means:
>
>Chao: design
>Katie: calendar
>Donn: content model in general
>
>I'd like to try to gather some information prior to having a 
>meeting, so replies to this message, Journal Notes wiki pages, etc, 
>would be welcome.

A related issue (date/time formatting) came up briefly during a 
meeting I had with John, Katie and Chao.

I suggested using ICU for cross-platform I18N support, though there 
currently isn't a Python extension module for it (though Nick Bastin 
is working on implementing wrappers for the Locale class).

ICU offers a good set of date/time manipulation and formatting 
classes, is stable, cross-platform, and being actively developed. You 
can get more info at <http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/>

The base time representation currently used is milliseconds since 
1/1/1970, though there are ongoing discussions about a high 
resolution, floating point format that would solve some issues you 
probably don't care about.

The actual date/time formatting API is the DateFormat class at 
<http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/apiref/classDateFormat.html>

-- Ken
-- 
Ken Krugler
TransPac Software, Inc.
<http://www.transpac.com>
+1 530-470-9200