[Sigia-l] display of date in multilanguage portal

[Karl Fast]

As a Canadian I have long had to deal with constant switching
between american and european date formats. I still do not know what
the "standard" is for Canada. Drives me nuts. Huge waste of time.

I have found two things that allow me to reliably interpret the date
format:

  - use some letters for the month, regardless of the order. So
    2003-MAR-03 or March 3, 2003 or something. These days I am
    constantly encountered confusions like 02/03/01. 

  - In most cases you should use the full form of the year. What's
    the year for 02-MAR-03?

There is an ISO standard for this (8601?). It recommends going from
least to most specific in time/date formats.

  Year-Month-Day Hours:Minutes:Seconds

  2003, February 1st  or 03-02-01

IIRC it's a weird standard because it allows for so many variations
and short forms as to be almost useless. 

--karl