Posted by Ben C on 11/01/07 09:22

On 2007-11-01, Bernhard Sturm <sturmnixspam@datacomm.ch> wrote:
> AGw. (Usenet) wrote:
>> On Oct 31, 9:16 pm, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
>
>>> The very idea is incorrect. When your page is in German, the dates in its
>>> content should follow whatever conventions you regard as applicable to the
>>> German language.
>>
>> What you're suggesting isn't correct, either; date format is not
>> simply determined by language. I believe that German and Italian
>> could be treated in this way, but I'm not sure about French, and it's
>> definitely not true for English. Spanish would also be a problem, if
>> I recall correctly, although it's not of course one of the languages
>> used by the particular site in question.
>>
>
> you are right: date format is mainly determined by the country and not
> by the language as Jukka suggested. That's why you should get different
> date formats for the English language version. That was my original
> idea, but as stated in another post: it doesn't work satisfyingly
> enough, so I drop the entire concept of dynamically offer a correct date
> format stamp for all users.

But that's even more confusing. If I'm reading what I think is a US
English page I expect US English date formats and so even though I am
not American I know that "9-11" doesn't mean the 9th of November.

But then there will be other readers blissfully ignorant of the fact
that there are different date formats at all. So inevitably there will
always be some confused readers.

So just use iso-8601. It's the only way out.

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