On Jan 11, 2011, at 9:11 AM, Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress wrote:
> I would also assume that we need only represent a year (and even then often only an approximation) and not month and day, or time.
>
> Proposal:
>
> 1. change the profile so that all years based on ISO 8601 syntax are four digits.
>
> 2. Introduce the following syntax. Note that we already use the character E to signal certain "extensions". Use EY to signal that a year follows, and the syntax is
>
> EY[year]
>
> where [year] may be (a) a plain (or signed) integer, e.g. 100001; or (b) an integer in scientific notation e.g. 17*10^9
>
> Comments please.
I'm not sure on the actual use cases for this, but if you do want to
use scientific notation, I think you'll achieve better compatibility with
most existing IT usage (and most existing libraries for handling
numbers) if you use the form "17E9" or "17e9" for it.
--
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