From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: util-linux-owner@vger.kernel.org Received: from mout.gmx.net ([212.227.17.21]:63398 "EHLO mout.gmx.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753729AbeAKCA2 (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Jan 2018 21:00:28 -0500 Subject: Re: [v3 PATCH 00/11] Pull Request - changelog To: Karel Zak References: <4833b897-2192-86dc-f81b-e977d98b07b1@gmx.com> <20180108102159.dyelg7kqp5tx3c3i@ws.net.home> Cc: util-linux@vger.kernel.org From: J William Piggott Message-ID: <6635776f-9787-f05c-704f-e326808daa1d@gmx.com> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2018 21:00:23 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20180108102159.dyelg7kqp5tx3c3i@ws.net.home> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Sender: util-linux-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 01/08/2018 05:21 AM, Karel Zak wrote: > On Tue, Jan 02, 2018 at 09:53:18AM -0500, J William Piggott wrote: > > I have no clue how many users care and read our ReleaseNotes, but > important is that they have opportunity to do that and they have > always time to adopt to changes. This is how I promised that this > project will be maintained. Your response here puzzled me, because I could not remember you ever making a pre-announcement of this nature before. For example when hwclock's default output format was changed in v2.28 it didn't even make the release highlights, let alone require a pre-change announcement. I did a quick grep and could not find a single instance of an advance notification for this type of change. > Thanks. I'll work on cal(1) in next days and use us much as possible > from your patches. I originally started a branch implemented for an advance notification; I backported some of my later fixes from the v3 submission to it. The resulting branch may be more to your liking: git@github.com:jwpi/util-linux.git 171225 The current v3 submission's branch is: git@github.com:jwpi/util-linux.git 171229 Both branches have an updated commit message for renaming --julian to --ordinal, expanding on the rational for it: cal(1) is unique in that it uses both Julian and Gregorian calendar systems. This causes a name collision with the --julian ordinal day option. Other commonly distributed code for POSIX-like systems do not share this problem because they all use the proleptic Gregorian calendar system exclusively; so they can get away with calling ordinal days 'julian' and using things like %j for formatting ordinal days. For cal(1) this ambiguity is problematic for developers, users, and for the implementation itself. There are no alternate names for the Julian calendar (system); alternates names for (ordinal) Julian calendar are: day-of-year, and ordinal. Ordinal being the preferred name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_date To implement an exclusive Julian Calendar output for cal(1) it will need to use the name Julian, because there are no alternatives. Even for a mixed calendar output the dates earlier than the reform epoch need to be labeled and referred to as 'Julian'. Therefore, the current --julian option needs to be renamed to --ordinal. While working on cal I discovered more things that are broken. I wanted to include the fixes in this patch set, but I thought it would be too much for this round. What I envision as the output to address these new issues will also need to use the term Julian to represent the calendar system.