Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!stc!drm
From: drm@tcom.stc.co.uk (David Monksfield)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: All numeric representation of dates
Message-ID: <638@jura.tcom.stc.co.uk>
Date: 31 Aug 88 08:38:08 GMT
References: <1988Aug28.010835.17290@utzoo.uucp> <2882@hubcap.UUCP> <1988Aug29.171545.10737@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: drm@htc2.UUCP (David Monksfield)
Organization: STC Telecomms, Harlow Technical Centre, Harlow
Lines: 32

In article <2882@hubcap.UUCP> billwolf@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:
>> I also question the human engineering of forms that put the year first.
>> It is consistent, and in some sense elegant, but it is poorly adapted to
>> human needs.  The most important information should be first.  For most
>> uses of dates, that is the day number, followed by the month.

I think the point here is that people do not necessarily read things
one character at a time, from left to right.  Familiar chunks (ie. most
single words and some phrases) are pattern-matched all at once.

Providing a lump of text matches your internal "date" template, the
brain is then quite capable of looking at whichever part happens to
be most important at the time.  If you want 'day of the month', you'll
look at whichever place in the date you expect it to be.

Thus from a 'human engineering' point of view, it matters little what
order things are in.  The only problem is in establishing familiarity
with a particular format in the first place.  I would like to be able
to see a 'familiar' date format anywhere in the world, no matter how
obscure that format may be.

P.S.  Typing "date" on this computer gives "Wed Aug 31 08:35:45 WET 1988"
      How's that for meaningful format and logical ordering?

--	
	
Cheers,                       |||||||| ||||||||| ||||||||      "I would prefer
                              |||         |||    |||           something a
   Dave Monksfield            ||||||||    |||    |||           little more
                                   |||    |||    |||           reliable than
drm@htc2,val3,lynx or         ||||||||    |||    ||||||||      hope." -- Avon
drm@jura.tcom.stc.co.uk         STC  Telecommunications        (Blake's 7)