Re: Picking up the ball

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From:

J-FORGET

Date:

January 10, 2003 09:26

Subject:

Re: Picking up the ball

Message ID:

v01520c01ba44a5ce606d@[193.250.191.248]

My thoughts about Dave Rolsky's mail (Thu, 9 Jan 2003 16:04:04 -0600 (CST))

I am interested in calendars. I have written Date::Convert::French_Rev
as a subclass of Mordechai Abzug's Date::Convert. My .profile executes a
script that uses all date modules: Maya, Roman, Discordian, Hebraic, Hobbit
and of course French_Rev

>2. Use the DateTime:: namespace.  The modules@perl.org cabal doesn't
>like it?  That's nice.  Their buy-in is nice, but lack thereof does
>not prevent success.  And in my experience, when presented with
>working code that's being used by a bunch of people, they may accept a
>namespace previously deemed unacceptable.
>
>Why a new top-level namespace?  Well, what's the difference between
>Date:: and Time::?  Not much, in most cases.  It seems like the
>authors of these modules mostly picked one at random.  There are a few
>exceptions, like Time::HiRes, but other than that, it's ridiculous.
>Moreover, the DateTime:: space is empty except for one module, and so
>it won't be cluttered by a million overlapping older modules.  So it
>provides a nice psychological benefit of dropping the baggage.

There *is* a difference between Date:: and Time:: namespaces. Date::
modules do not consider durations less than one day. I did not choose
at random between Date:: and Time:: for my module, neither did Rich
Bowen (Discordian), Abigail (Maya), Leo Cacciari (Roman), Mordechai
Abzug (Julian and Hebraic) and Tom Braun (Date::Tolkien::Shire).

Also, there are significant differences for the underlying algorithms
between time calculations and date calculations. Date calculations
are much harder than time calculations: variable length months,
1-based numbers, etc.

[snip]
>
>- DateTime::Algorithm - aka Rich's proposed Date::Algorithm.  Includes
>things like:
>
>-- DateTime::Algorithm::Leapyear
>-- DateTime::Algorithm::Passover
>
>
>- DateTime::Calendar - other calendars
>
>-- Must be interoperable with base datetime object!  This means that we
>can convert back and forth between the two on demand.
>
>-- DateTime::Calendar::Chinese
>-- DateTime::Calendar::Discordian
>
Why not simply Calendar::Chinese and Calendar::Discordian? and by the way,
why not also Calendar::Leapyear and Calendar::Passover?

I would not mind renaming my module Calendar::French_Rev, but I think
the DateTime:: namespace is very inapproriate. Hours, minutes and
seconds are not taken in account in my module. Using the DateTime::
would induce users to think hhmmss are taken into account.

Jean Forget

-- 
WYGIWYGAINGW =  "What You Get Is What You're Given And It's 
No Good Whining."

     Archichancelier Mustrum Ridcully
     (cité par Terry Prachett dans The Science of Discworld)

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