[TUHS] History of cal(1)?

Steffen Nurpmeso via TUHS tuhs at tuhs.org
Tue Sep 23 11:05:34 AEST 2025


John Levine via TUHS wrote in
 <20250923003454.03671DD56E9A at ary.qy>:
 |It appears that Douglas McIlroy via TUHS <douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> \
 |said:
 |>> [cal(1)] has all the logic to adjust for 16th century
 |>> calendar changes ...  (Try "cal 9 1752")
 |>> My impression is that [it is] overimplemented.
 |>
 |>The fact that a 16th century change is illustrated by an 18th century
 |>example suggests that not quite "all the logic" is there. It's good
 |>for Great Britain and its colonies, but not elsewhere. So I'd say it's
 |>underimplemented :)
 |
 |You'll be relieved to know that ncal has addressed that omission:
 |
 |$ ncal -p
 | AL Albania        1912-11-30      IS Iceland        1700-11-16
 | AT Austria        1583-10-05      IT Italy          1582-10-04
 | AU Australia      1752-09-02      JP Japan          1918-12-18
 | BE Belgium        1582-12-14      LT Lithuania      1918-02-01
 | BG Bulgaria       1916-03-31      LU Luxembourg     1582-12-14
 | CA Canada         1752-09-02      LV Latvia         1918-02-01
 | CH Switzerland    1655-02-28      NL Netherlands    1582-12-14
 | CN China          1911-12-18      NO Norway         1700-02-18
 | CZ Czech Republic 1584-01-06      PL Poland         1582-10-04
 | DE Germany        1700-02-18      PT Portugal       1582-10-04

(In an earlier thread on this topic Mr. McIlroy threw into
the discussion that for example Germany was very much more
complicated than that.  And i said iirc something like "we
tried to keep it local by then" [actually notoriously so], and
unfortunately talked about Mors Teutonicus even, as "we more
usually than not reached the Holy Land" before reaching the holy
land, which *possibly* is the only one and true way to reach the
holy land .. if you can.  (Pffffhh, what a talk.))

 | DK Denmark        1700-02-18      RO Romania        1919-03-31
 | ES Spain          1582-10-04      RU Russia         1918-01-31
 | FI Finland        1753-02-17      SI Slovenia       1919-03-04
 | FR France         1582-12-09      SE Sweden         1753-02-17
 | GB United Kingdom 1752-09-02      TR Turkey         1926-12-18
 | GR Greece         1924-03-09     *US United States  1752-09-02
 | HU Hungary        1587-10-21      YU Yugoslavia     1919-03-04
 |
 |R's,
 |John
 |
 |PS: my point was not that it's a lot of code, but that is's a distinctive \
 |hack so one might
 |look at earlier calendar programs to see whether they also did it to \
 |try and trace the
 |chain of influence.
 --End of <20250923003454.03671DD56E9A at ary.qy>

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)


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