Islamic Calendar

users
#1

All:

Can somebody either point to or explain why Islamic Calendar functions
are only available for the following locales:
* ar_EG: Arabic Egypt;
* ar_LB: Arabic Lebanon;
* ar_SA: Arabic Saudi Arabia;
* ar_TUN: Arabic Tunisia;

I couldn't find anything on the LibreOffice website in English, Dutch,
or German. Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo were equally uninformative. :frowning:

jonathon

#2

Quoting toki <toki.kantoor@gmail.com>:

All:

Can somebody either point to or explain why Islamic Calendar functions
are only available for the following locales:
* ar_EG: Arabic Egypt;
* ar_LB: Arabic Lebanon;
* ar_SA: Arabic Saudi Arabia;
* ar_TUN: Arabic Tunisia;

I couldn't find anything on the LibreOffice website in English, Dutch,
or German. Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo were equally uninformative. :frowning:

jonathon

if there are particular locales you'd like to see why not be specific?

D

#3

That's an interesting question. Why should calendars be tied to locales? For example, an English-speaking Muslim living in the EU or North America may well want to use an Islamic calendar for some purposes. Similarly, an Asian person living elsewhere may find it useful to work with the "Chinese" calendar.

And then there are the Julian versus Gregorian calendars use in various Christian denominations. While all European nations use the Gregorian calendar secularly, the Julian is still used for religious purposes.

Is this a case of the locales being overused for things that aren't really location dependent?

#4

Is this possibly tied to the character set?

#5

Why should calendars be tied to locales?

For Lunar based calenders, which is what the Islamic calendar is, the
issue is which meridian to use, for sighting the new moon.

For those who use the Thelemic Calendar, both longitude and latitude are
significant. (Right now it is Anno Vii ☉ 19 :leo: ☽ 3 :sagittarius: A 27 :sagittarius:.)

For oddities such as those, a configuration setting in ">Tools >Options"
could be added, with a reasonable default as a fallback option. Mecca
for the Islamic Calendar. Boleskine House for the Thelemic Calendar.
Jerusalem for a Karaite Jewish Calendar, etc.

While all European nations use the Gregorian calendar secularly, the Julian is still used for religious purposes.

My impression is that the Buddhist calendar is still used in Kalmykia.

Is this a case of the locales being overused for things that aren't really location dependent?

Discussion about Sharia law can take place somewhere else, such as your
local mosque on Friday, at noon.

Which locale to use for an Islamic Calendar _can_ be the subject of a
ruling by either a local imam, or a national body. The issue being
whether or not it is acceptable to declare a new month, without any
reports of the new moon being sighted.

For one of the locales, the new moon must be sighted by two reliable
witnesses, before the month can be declared, however, for one of the
other locales, a new moon can be declared, without sighting the new moon.

The current trend is to ignore new moon sighting, relying instead upon
astronomical calculations of where the moon is, and whether or not it
would be visible. This means that the calender might be more location
dependent, but, at the same time, one has less reliance on potentially
unreliable witnesses, and their spiritual leaders. The practical
application is that it is possible for one to look outside, see the
crescent moon, but because of the selected locale, the calender does not
show the new month. (This scenario is not uncommon with people in
Hawaii, who rely on notification from sources in either Egypt or Saudi
Arabia.)

Dave Stevens wrote:

if there are particular locales you'd like to see why not be specific?

My thinking is that if one is going to go to create a calendar, it
should be available for all locales. It doesn't matter if one is talking
about the Mayan Long Count, the Islamic Calendar, or the Thelemic
Calendar.

jonathon

#6

The usage for a Calendar must also be considered. In addition to changes
depending on country, culture, religion and all the other considerations
mentioned, there is the issue of moment in time. Genealogy and History
(including dependent disciplines such as archeology, et. al.) require a lot
more knowledge.

Even those who share the "same" calendar (such as the Gregorian) don't
always have the same view of what date it is. For someone in Germany, the
3rd of September 1752 followed the 2nd of September 1752. In the American
Colonies however, the day after Wednesday September 2nd was Thursday
September 14th. (Unix/Linux systems support this; try typing "cal 1752" at
the command line and, depending on locale, you may be surprised.) Other
countries using the Gregorian calendar "corrected" its accumulated errors at
quite different times, but they all have similar burps in their calendars.

And don't forget the French revolutionary calendar. Napoleon's greatest
contribution to France might just have been his abolishment of that unusual
thirteen month calendar. Ben Franklin, who traveled between France and the
American colonies in those years likely experienced far worse jet lag than
any of us ever had from air travel.

The point is, I suppose, that we must settle for the 99% of needs we have;
it seems unlikely that any software will ever support *every* such
variation. Right now, we're probably in the upper 80% range, but that's all
we're likely to see.

Have a great day, whatever date you suspect it might be.

#7

That makes a case for some inclusion in locale but a pretty Euro-centric one of limited usefulness except to historians. I'd argue that locale dependency more correctly should be a search-term dependency since the date depends more on the area you are investigating rather than the place you are residing.

I note that a similar issue occurred in Europe when the start of the new year was moved from Easter to January 1. Historians deal with it by listing both years for dates prior to switch. I suspect that they probably do something similar, or cite the calendar in use, for dates using a Julian calendar after the invention of the Gregorian.

#8

In looking for an explanation of why only those four Arabic locales have
an Islamic calendar, I stumbled across a guy that was fed up with trying
to convert between calendar systems, so he created a database whose
index key is the Julian Day. Then he reconciled the Gregorian and Julian
Calendar dates to Julian Days, to populate the database. As his focus
in history changes, he adds other calendars, as appropriate, to the
database.

jonathon

#9

True.
Which is why, given the difficulties in constructing an Islamic
calendar, I'm surprised that it is only available for those four locales.

jonathon

#10

And of course the Julian day (day in the year) has nothing to do with the Julian calendar. It's merely a historical accident that the names are the same. :slight_smile: