Re: y2000 for the gs

[a2mg@aol.com (A2MG)]

> If a program only provides two places for the year, then you can type in "99"
today and you can type in "00" next January. 

Unfortunately, in many cases, you can't type in 00. Most Apple II programs
prohibit entry of a year earlier than 68, 76, 80, 83, or whatever the
programmer decided was reasonable or convenient.  This happens both (a) on a
program's startup, or (b) when reading or writing data. This is what we fix in
our Y2K fixes. (See http://members.aol.com/A2MG for a list of programs that are
already fixed.)

> my Dad was born in June 1911. He tells me he's going to live to be a hundred.

Correct. Most Apple II programs, even when fixed for cosmetic, data entry, and
other problems with Y2K, will not be able to do date math across the century
(example: Show me all transactions from 1998 to 2002 will not work). The
exception is AppleWorks 4 and 5, where chronological sorting and date math
(adding and subtracting dates) across the century does work in the data base
and spreadsheet.

> A few useful Apple II programs that fall into case (2) can be patched to
behave as case (3) -- I believe AppleWorks 5.1 is the prototypical

AppleWorks 5.1 is already fixed to handle a century transition upon startup. It
does not have to be patched.  It's already in there. The cutoff date is
1960/2059.

The single, small, Y2K bug in AppleWorks 5.1 is in the spreadsheet, and has
nothing to do with the system date or startup.

Another thing AppleWorks 5.1 handles automatically is 4-digit years in the data
base, for example, you can have a data base of people born in 1211, 1311, 1811,
1911, and 2011, and all with show the century correctly. All will sort
chronologically, too.

> You'll find that the finder will give you "2031" if you put in "31" for the
year, but will give you "1941" if you put in "41". 

True, but only if the program (such as the Finder) shows the century. Programs
like ProSel-16 do not show the century. They will show as 1/1/41. They will
still not chronological sort properly.  In ProSel (and in AppleWorks 5 and
other programs which sort a file list (disk directory) by date), chrono sorts
will be a great loss for us after 2000. 

> Another kind of y2k problem is, will a program know, despite the year 2000
being evenly divisible by 400, IT IS A LEAP YEAR, so that the day after 28
February 2000 is 29 February 2000 and not 1 March 2000?

The formula for Leap years is very specific, and includes dividing by 400.
Clocks and software should already handle it. Programs like AppleWorks use
Julian dates, which automatically handle Leap years.

Beverly Cadieux 
http://members.aol.com/A2MG