time, calendar, datetime, etc

[Tim Peters]

[Dan Bishop]
>>> There were no leap years between 10 BC and AD 4, because after
>>> Julius Caesar's death, the priests in charge of the calendar
>>> mistakenly added leap days every 3 years instead of 4, and this had
>>> to be corrected.
>>>
>>> I wouldn't expect the datetime module to deal with that, though ;-)

[Tim]
>> Thank you -- some people did <wink>.

[John Roth]
> I don't think I noticed that:

Were you a participant in datetime's design process (the fishbowl on
zope.org, previously referenced)?  If so, sorry, I don't recall it.

> the entire point behind the proleptic calender is that you're
> projecting the current practice back to times where they weren't
> doing it that way.

And forward too, of course.  But not everyone *wanted* a proleptic calendar
(of any flavor).  The use cases on the datetime wiki turned out not to care
either way (business uses generally don't give a rip about years before
1900), so I pushed for the conceptual simplicity of the proleptic Gregorian
(which coincides with current reckoning in much of the world, so satisfied
the use cases).

> That's clearly an opportunity for someone to add an extension -
> except that there are other problems in that era, and the lack
> of leap years is the least of them.

People who care can scratch their own itches.