Representing ambiguity in datetime?

[Andrew Dalke]

Ron Adam wrote:
> This is a very common problem in genealogy research as well as other 
> sciences that deal with history, such as geology, geography, and archeology.
  ..
> So it seems using 0's for the missing day or month may be how to do it.

Except of course humans like to make things more complicated than that.
Some journals are published quarterly so an edition might be "Jan-Mar".
Some countries refer to week numbers, so an event might be in "week 12".

I offer no suggestions as to how to handle these cases.

				Andrew
				dalke at dalkescientific.com