[Freeciv-Dev] Re: A bunch of patches

[Jason Short <vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, andi payn wrote:
>
> > [calendar]
> > Tony:
> >
> > > Sub-year advancement should also be possible here.
> > On my local tree, I have this, but it displays like "Year: 1944.25,"
> > which clearly sucks. The question is, how should it work? Should we
> > just assume Gregorian calendaring? Or should we come up with something
> > flexible? If so, how flexible? Real-world flexibility would be a
> > nightmare (imagine each player changing from a nation-specific
> > "native" calendar to Gregorian at different times; imagine handling
> > lunar calendars with cycles that don't match the year; imagine
> > handling early calendars like the pre-Julian Roman system or the
> > pre-reform Hebrew calendar; etc.).
> I can't imagine a modpack writer would actually want to use
> nation-specific calendars, or lunar calendars for that matter. (But I
> might be wrong.) I think it would suffice to determine a starting year and
> an array list of "months". The year has as many months as found in this
> array, and each month is by default equal to one turn.
What a modpack writer would want, though, is some flexibility in setting 
the number of intervals per year.  I would think 4, 12, and 365.24 would 
probably be enough.
It's always possible for translators to manipulate things; for instance 
the 12 months could be translated into some other 12-unit system.  You'd 
still be restricted to the given intervals, though.
A more general solution might allow the modpack to specify the number of 
intervals and give them names.  This would allow, for instance, a 
Tolkien modpack to use the Tolkien calendar.  But it would make it 
difficult to hard-code the leap-year, so it's not entirely better.
jason