Converting Julian dates

[Ron Kracht]

Brian K. White wrote:

> John Esak wrote:
>
>> <top-posted>
>>
>> No offense guys... but, just how the hell would either of your
>> responses as wonderfully "technical" and "correct" and "looked-up" as
>> they are have helped Richard in his question about using the "Julian
>> Date"??  :-)  My simple answer went one heck of a lot further toward
>> being helpful than either of yours and just once, I'm going to state
>> so. If the goal is helping other here, great, if it is helping one's
>> own ego in who can "google up" the quickest -definition-... well, I'd
>> op for the useful less *genuine* answer.
>>
>> Again, I say (and this time really mean...)  Sheesh!
>>
>> John Esak
>
>
> I don't see how you can say that. Your interpretation didn't match his 
> question since he quoted a value well outside the range of the day of 
> any one year. In fact you provided a subset of the same help they did 
> by providing one valid interpretation whereas they provided (or tried 
> to) all the possible ones.
>
> Either the question was completely false in that the data isn't 
> actually any form of julian date, or the type of julian date needs to 
> be determined before a formula could be proposed to interpret or 
> generate values. And they tried as best as can be expected to describe 
> the different definitions to help the OP answer the question.
>
> If they hadn't "googled up" definitions, then that would be not 
> helpful, leaving it up to the OP to figure out not only that there is 
> an ambiguity to resolve, but also to hunt down all the possible 
> answers, then pick the one trhat seems to match his data best. They 
> tried to do as much as they could to just give him the legwork and let 
> him just do the part only he can which is look at his data.
>
> I can't find any fault in any of that.
>
> Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
> +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
> filePro BBx  Linux SCO  Prosper/FACTS AutoCAD  #callahans Satriani
>
Thanks. 

And for the record John, I didn't "google up" the answer - I already had 
it bookmarked :-)  I've run into this before and the site I had 
bookmarked not only had the history but also provides the formulas to 
calculate a technically valid Julian date.  I didn't provide the 
formulas because (1) they would have been incorrect for the  Microsoft 
definition of Julian date and (2) Ken had already determined the correct 
method for calculating the proper values for this application. Since Ken 
had already implied that there are any number of different meanings of 
Julian date the point of my post was to say that there is a widely 
ignored Julian date standard. 

As long as we are on the subject though -  the proper calculations could 
easily be done in just about any programming language including filePro 
so I have to wonder why people insist on implementing more restrictive 
definitions that don't provide any more value.