[tei-council] date proposal

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Lou Burnard wrote:
>
> Suppose you are working on a medieval source which refers to a date 
> such as 12 i MDDDIV. If there are scads of such things chances are 
> you'd prefer to work in the medieval calendar passim, so you want to 
> just regularize[1] the date (to 1304-01-12). But if you want to 
> compare dates between sources prepared using different calendars (e.g. 
> you have a muslim source in which dates are given in some other form) 
> you have to normalize[1] them as well. But normalizing  to the 
> equivalent modern date (some time in dec 1303 probably) requires a 
> major calculation, involving the precession of the equinoxes and the 
> 30days we lost in 17-whenever and who knows what else.
Is it possible, or isn't it? If it is possible at document creation 
time, it is possible at document
publication time. It may be major for you on your fingers and toes, but 
I betcha a few hundred
lines of Java can do it in a twinkling.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

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