Telling Time Internationally
Bill Hall - MLM Associates, Inc.
Intended Audience: |
Managers, Software Engineers, Localization Engineers |
Session Level: |
Intermediate |
Developers as a group would rather not think about the problems
of writing code that supports world wide use. Yet, some of the most
interesting problems arise here. In this talk, we show how to build
a simple program that introduces .NET date, time, and calendar
handling capabilities in combination with a range of interesting
technologies. Specifically, we show how to write a program in .NET
that uses the Internet to access the National Institute of Standard
and Technologies' very accurate clock and renders the time and date
in as many formats as are available for any selected .NET culture.
Along the way, calendars from Hebrew and Hijri to Japanese Era and
Thai Buddhist are encountered, Julian and modified Julian Days are
explained, a bit of socket programming and direct operating system
calls are explored, and how XML can help in managing a list of
service providers. |