Subject: Re: Question: Week Number Semantics

From: Pat Egen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999 18:28:03 -0500

One other item on my previous note.  The people were more concerned about the
day the week starts than on the week number.

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From: Pat Egen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999 18:22:26 -0500

Frank, in response to your request for some end-user feedback, I put the
question our on one of our Notes databases at SHARE. Here's some of the
comments.  I took out names of people, but left in their organizations.
- - - - - - - - -
"It is important that the start of the week be considered a variable.  While the
work week might start on Monday, some people's work week starts on a Sunday.  In
the 4 day, 10 hr/day work environment, the week might start on Tuesday.
Therefore, it is shortsighted to assume that Monday is the day to choose."

Director, US Army Research
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I agree with ...(person above)..... and can give you a concrete example.  For
reasons known only to our bean counters, our week starts on Saturday.  So, if we
were to use a calendaring program to input, say, our time accounting, we would
need to specify Saturday as the starting day.  We use a web based program
currently and that's the way it is set up. (And it's not my favorite
application.)

Hope this helps

Strategist from Storage Tech
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The start of the week needs to be flexible, my brother-in-law's factory ran
their work week on a Thursday to Wednesday basis.

Sr. Technical Programmer  from VERY large insurance company
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On a worldwide basis you need to have flexability on the start of the week.
I've seen it be everything from Thursday through Tuesday (for some reason I've
never seen a copy start on Wednesday ??).   While the majority use Monday in
North America, this is not typical worldwide

Network Consultant (very, very active internationally with Customer
organizations) - from IBM Network Division, RTP

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From: Pat Egen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 12:16:51 -0500

Frank, here's another addition to comments from end users.  This one is from a
Sr Manager at a large Canadian Bank

"The defined start of a week can vary, depending on the processing needs of
various departments and business units. For example, I report time sheet data
based on a Sunday-to-Saturday week. The 'business week'' starts on Monday and
the Change Management system uses a week starting on Tues. I think this needs to
be a user defined value."

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From: Phil Wolff <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 16:14:03 -0800

With the addition of the ".mars" domain, we're talking about years and
weeknumbers that are very different. I don't know that RFC 2445 or ISO 8601
address this.

Chris' comments on inter-calendaring systems bring back a basic notion. We're
dictating an exchange protocol. As long as it is rigorous, we can translate and
perform calendar arithmetic, scheduling logic, and user representation between
any two systems.

I'm influenced by the way HTML can link to external CSS style sheets. Is there a
logical separation where we describe events, event rules, and other event
characteristics that are separate from the core protocol? Week number seems to
me to be a lot like calculating the first night of Ramadan or Rosh Hashana or a
fiscal quarter. These schemes are useful, and used widely. Do we need to include
their logic and algebras in this standard? Or can we includes those calendar
logics and algebras by external reference?

In this approach, you pass along the attributes you want and a URI that either
does conversion for you or that provides you with the conversion logic so your
tool can do it itself.

An external reference would:
    Allow me to build a calendar tool that can be flexbile and grow. If the
logics are external, I can use them as they become available.
    Cut the complexity of my event data. If all I need to know is that I have a
meeting 60 minutes before sunset until 45 minutes after on Tuesdays and
Thursdays in Paris for the next year, per
http://calendar.judaica.is/traditional.dtd; then I don't need to do the solar
calculations and render them for 104 unique meetings.
    Same thing for week of fiscal year data. I can rely on an external engine
specified by the event author to do the conversion. What's more, I can share the
URI for cross-calendar scheduling so popular/useful representations can spread.

I'm working in IT for a firm that has more than a million workers spread among
40 countries and based at hundreds of thousands of customers. Our calendar
revolves around time card weeks ending Fridays in the US but other days around
the world. These ietf protocols matter if they help bridge regional, cultural,
and corporate barriers.
    I don't expect to be worrying about our Martian subsidiary any time soon,
but this protocol should provide for those differences for broad acceptance on
this planet.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Wolff
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