Secular/neutral eras


Author	Peter Edberg
Date	2013-04-23,24
Status	Proposal
Feedback to	pedberg (at) apple (dot) com
Bugs	- #649 Write up PRI on secular forms of Eras (eg CE) - #1574 Calendar-gregorian era : Add “CE” and “BCE” as additional alternate era terms - #4656 Calendar-gregorian era : Add “CE” and “BCE” as additional alternate era terms

Currently for gregorian we have the following in “root”:

<eras>
    <eraNames>
        <alias source="locale" path="../eraAbbr"/>
    </eraNames>
    <eraAbbr>
        <era type="0">BE</era>
        <!-- = 544 BC gregorian. -->
    </eraAbbr>
    <eraNarrow>
        <alias source="locale" path="../eraAbbr"/>
    </eraNarrow>
\</eras>

and we have the following in “en”, for example:

<eras>
    <eraNames>
        <era type="0">Before Christ</era>
        <era type="1">Anno Domini</era>
    </eraNames>
    <eraAbbr>
        <era type="0">BC</era>
        <era type="1">AD</era>
    </eraAbbr>
    <eraNarrow>
        <era type="0">B</era>
        <era type="1">A</era>
    </eraNarrow>
</eras>

We need a way that locales can provide data for an alternate secular/neutral era name if their default era name has a religious basis (as with the current en/gregorian/era naming).

Since many locales already use a secular/neutral name as the default for gregorian, this would need to fall back to the default name in the same locale.

The easiest way to do this is just provide <eras alt=”variant”>l in locales that need it. A request for the “variant” form will fall back to the default form in the same locale if no “variant” form is present. So in “en” we would add this:

<eras alt="variant">
    <eraNames>
        <era type="0">Before Common Era</era>
        <era type="1">Common Era</era>
    </eraNames>
    <eraAbbr>
        <era type="0">BCE</era>
        <era type="1">CE</era>
    </eraAbbr>
</eras>

(We could use other names for the alt form such as “secular” or “neutral” but “variant” is more general and already widely supported.)