Re: gnus date suggestion

[Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr>]

pinard@iro.umontreal.ca (François Pinard) writes:

> The usual wrong thing with dates is using local American habits in
> wide distribution contexts (like mail and news) for when programs
> have *not* been internationalised, or by default.  ISO 8601 would be
> a good default.

Gnus is news software.  For a newsreader, I think it's best to heed
RFC1036.

2.1.2.  Date

    The "Date" line (formerly "Posted") is the date that the message was
    originally posted to the network.  Its format must be acceptable
    both in RFC-822 and to the getdate(3) routine that is provided with
    the Usenet software.  This date remains unchanged as the message is
    propagated throughout the network.  One format that is acceptable to
    both is:

                      Wdy, DD Mon YY HH:MM:SS TIMEZONE
[...]


I don't think ISO 8601 is allowed by RFC822, but I may be wrong.
SoR1036 is even stricter when defining the `Date':

    5.1. Date

    The  Date header contains the date and time when the article
    was submitted for transmission:

	 Date-content  = [ weekday "," space ] date space time
	 weekday       = "Mon" / "Tue" / "Wed" / "Thu"
		       / "Fri" / "Sat" / "Sun"
	 date          = day space month space year
	 day           = 1*2digit
	 month         = "Jan" / "Feb" / "Mar" / "Apr" / "May" / "Jun"
		       / "Jul" / "Aug" / "Sep" / "Oct" / "Nov" / "Dec"
	 year          = 4digit / 2digit
	 time          = hh ":" mm [ ":" ss ] space timezone
	 timezone      = "UT" / "GMT"
		       / ( "+" / "-" ) hh mm [ space "(" zone-name ")" ]
	 hh            = 2digit
	 mm            = 2digit
	 ss            = 2digit
	 zone-name     = 1*( <ASCII printable character except ()\> / space )

    This is a restricted subset of the MAIL date format.

As you can see, Gnus already emits the correct date, but having the
weekday would be desirable both for humans and rfc recommendation.

I think following ISO 8601 would be the wrong thing in this case.
Yes, internationalization is a fine thing.  But here we are talking
about Usenet software.  If the software we help create doesn't conform
to the RFCs, how can we expect the others to conform?

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!!