Re: [util-linux] cal doesn't honor first_weekday value from locale

From: peter karlsson (peter_at_softwolves.pp.se)
Date: 2001-11-22 17:28:41

[I'm a participant of the sv@li.org list, that's where I came in to this
 discussion]

> So, people who advocate the glibc call should take the situation in the
> entire world into account, not just that in Sweden.

Well, your situation is basically that you only want to take USA into
consideration. If you take the entire world into account, you will find that
most countries have Monday as the first day of the week (even my UKian
colleagues agree with me on that), and that is also the ISO standard.

> Since the original cal program in Unix starts at Sunday, we may conclude
> that thirty years ago Sunday was what felt most natural to these authors.

That's because those authors were USians. Extending your reasoning, we
shuldn't translate Unix programs into Swedish, because thirty years ago, the
original Unix authors only wrote their software in the American flavour of
English?

I don't think so.

Regarding your URLs, I can probably give you ten times as many links showing
that we normally use Monday as first day of the week. But that doesn't
really matter, since we have checked with the standards documents. Or do you
believe everything you read on the web?

> There is clearly a use for calendars starting the week on Sunday.

As a curiosity, perhaps. I would never use such a calendar for anything
serious.

-- 
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peter - http://www.softwolves.pp.se/

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