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Calendars on Win32 -- Not all there yet

Sorting it all Out
Michael Kaplan's random stuff of dubious value
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MSDN Blogs > Sorting it all Out > Calendars on Win32 -- Not all there yet

Calendars on Win32 -- Not all there yet

14 Jan 2005 5:36 PM
  • Comments 5

You can all really tell I like calendars on Win32, can't you? :-)

Well, if you are using the Gregorian calendar, then you have a good support story. You have full localization into every language. And I am not just talking about the Windows UI language list but every single locale on the system. And if you are willing to use a bit of COM you get good parsing support so you have as really good and full featured setup.

If you are using the Thai Buddhist calendar then you don't get localization other than Thai, but you probably did not need it anyway. And if you have an even remotely recent version of COM you even have that parsing support (though not in VB5 and VB6, I'll talk about that another time). So the story is not great but its pretty good.

If you are using the Hijri calendar then you get the parsing support in COM and it even works well in COM clients like VB5 and VB6. Unfortunately you also get no localization other than Arabic. Which is fine if you live in Saudi Arabia or other countries that are Arabic-speaking, but not as great if you are in the Maldives (since there is no Divehi localization).

Other calenders (Japanese Emporer, Taiwan, Korean Tangun Era) have no parsing support and no localization -- this is not as bad as it might be since it is most used by native speakers of the appropiate langauages. But it is still a little stifling. What is really needed is a sensible localization model for calendars that allows them to be localized when it is needed. Since every once in a while, it is....

You can just think of calendars as the vast underbelly/dark side of NLS!

This post brought to you by "۞" (U+06de, a.k.a. ARABIC START OF RUB EL HIZB)

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  • Adrian
    16 Jan 2005 3:01 PM
    > Other calenders (Japanese Emporer, Taiwan, Korean Tangun Era) have no parsing support.

    I thought that VarDateFromStr() could handle Japanese dates and knew about the various eras, years of the Emperors and such like. Is this not the case, or are you using "parsing support" to mean something deeper than converting strings into DATE structures?
  • Michael Kaplan
    16 Jan 2005 3:13 PM
    Well, I was actually limiting myself to the cases that had documented support. There is some xupport for parsing of other calendars in COM, but none of it is documented and only Hijri and Thau have explicit flags defined....
  • Sorting It All Out
    6 Jul 2007 8:28 AM

    People who have been reading here for a while know that I am pretty down on the way Windows supports

  • Sorting It All Out
    17 Dec 2007 10:45 AM

    The question I received via the Contact link was: Dear Michael, we have a huge issues with Persian (Jalali)

  • Sorting It All Out
    9 Jan 2008 10:56 AM

    From the recently pre-recorded blogs collection... (Hat tip and apologies to the Goddess Aretha whose

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MSDN Blogs > Sorting it all Out > Calendars on Win32 -- Not all there yet