[Dev] Date / Time types

[Ted Leung]

Hi Ken,

On Nov 8, 2004, at 12:05 PM, Ken Krugler wrote:

> 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).

I know that Nick is working on wrappers, but haven't been in touch with 
him in some time...

>
> 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/>

Yep, I'm aware of the work on ICU.  In a previous life, I worked down 
the hall from the ICU team at IBM.  ICU may well turn out to be a good 
choice for our implementation.   At the moment, I want to make sure we 
understand what we expect to get from the date/time types.  I18N 
concerns are definitely in scope for that

Ted