Re: v2.32 cal(1)

[Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org>]

Karel Zak <kzak@redhat.com> writes:

> The problem is that year 1752 is very specific to British Empire and
> for example Catholic Europe moved to the Gregorian calendar in year
> 1582.
...
> * later (after warning in release notes) we can make --gregorian as
>   the default

The date of cal's switch is specified in POSIX as 1752, though:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cal.html
(with a note that future versions may make this depend on the locale).

So if the default is changed, it would be worth noting the deviation
from POSIX in the man page, and maybe even defaulting to the old
behaviour if POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined, as, e.g., coreutils does for
other bits of dubious but mandated behaviour.

I wonder if it might be more helpful just to report an error if cal is
run for a year prior to 1926 without explicitly specifying which
calendar to use?

Thanks,

-- 
Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org>                         <http://offog.org/>