Re: [libreoffice-users] Dot separated date in YYYY.MM.DD format

At 03:59 01/01/2015 +0000, Conly Honly Donly wrote:
> At last, I knew how my colleagues strongly 
> believed and what they wanted to achieve. They 
> wanted a date format which works across all 
> known free, paid, old and new versions of 
> spreadsheet program, e.g. LibreOffice Calc. They 
> decided to use YYYY.MM.DD. and MM.DD., e.g. 
> 2015.01.01. ---> three dots. 1st January, 2015. 
> and 01.01. ---> two dots. 1st January.
> This format is standardized internally for communication. The good things are:
> (1) The date is stored as "text" or "string" on 
> the computer. It is not a "number" to the 
> computer any more. Adding or subtracting dates 
> is disabled. It is good for just displaying the 
> dates, which my colleagues wanted.

Spreadsheets generally used for calculation, so 
preventing it would usually be considered a 
drawback, not an advantage. You could put text 
values into word processor tables instead. But chacun à son goût.

> There is virtually a very large range of dates 
> can be processed, e.g. AD 1000.01.01. to AD 
> 9999.12.31. and BC 1000.01.01. to BC 9999.12.31.

Hold on: "BC 1000.01.01. to BC 9999.12.31." makes 
no sense, as your start date is after your end 
date! Do you mean BC 9999.12.31. to BC 
1000.01.01.? But that starts at the end if the 
first year and finishes at the beginning of the 
end year, losing all but one day each of those 
two years. So perhaps you mean BC 9999.01.01. to 
BC 1000.12.31.? That's better, but it still 
leaves you with what would be a roughly 
twenty-thousand year range - but with a strange 
central gap of 1998 years, from 999 BC (BCE) to 
AD 999 (CE) inclusive. I can't imagine you mean that.

> This YYYY.MM.DD. format is a beautiful workaround ...

Spreadsheets have always been able to handle 
text. I suspect most spreadsheet users would not 
see selecting text as a data type to be a workaround, beautiful or otherwise.

> I can think of two limitations.

People make mistakes. One obvious limitation is 
that non-existent dates can be entered as easily 
as real ones. Entering "2015.02.29." as text 
creates something looking as much like a date as 
does "2015.02.28.", whereas entering these 
(supposed) dates normally shows one as a 
right-aligned date and the other as left-aligned 
text. Only Erich Kästner and perhaps the 
Tiananmen Square protestors are allowed the 35th of May.

But I say again: chacun à son goût.

Brian Barker  


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