                     ====================================
                       Package "Date::Calc" Version 5.4
                     ====================================


                  Copyright (c) 1995 - 2004 by Steffen Beyer.
                             All rights reserved.


Credits:
--------

Many thanks to Andreas Koenig for his efforts as upload-manager for the
CPAN, his patience, and lots of very good advice and suggestions! Thank
you for doing such a tremendous (and very time-consuming) job!!

Also many thanks to David Jenkins for reviewing the first version of this
README file and the english man page.

Thanks to Jarkko Hietaniemi for suggesting the "days_in_month()" function.

Many thanks to Christian <chrisi@vm.akh-wien.ac.at> for reporting the bug
fixed in version 1.4, which showed up on an HP E55 running HP-UX 10.01 and
Perl 5.001m with the c89 Ansi 89 compiler from HP.

Also many thanks to David Thompson <dlt@dewey.csun.edu> for reporting a
problem he encountered concerning the inclusion of the Perl distribution
("Unable to find include file ...") and for suggesting a solution for this
problem. (That's the most pleasant kind of problem report, of course! ;-) )

Many thanks to Tom Limoncelli <tal@plts.org> for raising the question of
how to calculate the 2nd Thursday of a given month and year!

Many thanks to Bart Robinson <lomew@cs.utah.edu> for suggesting the "all"
export option and the "decode_day()" and "decode_month()" functions.

Also many thanks to Ron Savage <Ron.Savage@datacraft.com.au> for suggesting
the incorporation of time calculations into this module. (Sorry that I
didn't include the handling of time zones, which can be taken care of
more easily by adding/subtracting the appropriate time value in an extra,
preliminary step!)

Many thanks to Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com> for reporting
the bug (and how to fix it!) concerning arrays as parameters, fixed
in version 2.2!

Many thanks to Tim Zingelman <zingelman@fnal.gov> for reporting the problem
fixed in version 2.3 and for testing an intermediate new version of this
module on his machine!

Many thanks to Jonas Liljegren <jonas@cultcom.se> for posting a subroutine
for calculating easter monday in news:comp.lang.perl.modules and thereby
triggering my writing of the new "Date::CalcLib" module which has been
added in version 3.0 of the "Date::Calc" distribution.

Also many thanks to Claus Tondering <claus@tondering.dk> for his excellent
web pages and FAQ in news:news.answers about calendars and how to calcu-
late easter sunday.

Thanks to Reinhold Stansich <dynaconsult@netway.at> for posting a list
of christian feast days and their offsets from easter sunday in news:
comp.databases.ms-access and to Tammo Schnieder <schniede@hh.sdm.de>
for sending me his posting.

Many thanks to Max Ruffert <mor@mpa-garching.mpg.de> at the Max Planck
Institute for Astrophysics in Garching for looking up Gauss' Rule for
calculating easter sunday (the algorithm which is implemented in the
"Date::CalcLib" module) for me and dictating it to me over the
phone!

Many thanks to Chris Halverson <cdh@CompleteIS.com> for asking me
"is there a "standard" way to create a calendar similar to the output
of cal(1)?", which gave me the idea to write the function "calendar"
which has been added to the module "DateCalcLib" in version 3.1, and
also for the C code demonstrating how to use the C library "lib_date.c"
stand-alone, because that was what he needed to do as well.

Many thanks to Gunardi Wu <gunardi@starindo.net> for notifying me about
the bug in the "Add_Delta_YMD()" function which was fixed in version 4.1.

Thanks to the several people who notified me about two compiler warnings
concerning incompatible character types in Calc.xs line 857 (added two
casts in version 4.2 to fix this flaw).

Many thanks to Alessio Bragadini <alessio@sevenseas.org> for the patch he
sent in to add Italian as one of the supported languages (version 4.3).

Many thanks to Roland Titze <Roland.Titze@ks.sel.alcatel.de> and
to Andrew Brown <alloneword@dial.pipex.com> for pointing out the
misspelling of "whether" (was: wether) throughout my documentation,
corrected in version 5.0.

Special thanks go to Tim Mueller-Seydlitz <Tim.MuellerSeydlitz@blb.de>
for notifying me about the inability of all string decoding routines
to parse special ISO-Latin-1 characters correctly.

Many thanks to Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no> for many good suggestions
and his patch for adding support for Norwegian.

Many thanks to Jerker Nilsson <jnn@annons.dn.se> for his patch for
adding Swedish.

Also many thanks to Masanao Izumo <mo@goice.co.jp> for raising the
question of a "Delta_YMD()" function and for sending in patches.

And last but not least many thanks to Slaven Rezic <eserte@cs.tu-berlin.de>,
Tobias Brox <tobiasb@odin.funcom.com> and Matthew Persico <persicom@acedsl.com>
for suggesting date objects with overloaded operators, which were added in
version 5.0.

Many thanks to Tobias Brox <tobiasb@odin.funcom.com> again for the idea
of supplying one set of comparison operators which compare only the date
part, and another set of operators which compare date and time (or fall
back to comparing only the date if both operands lack the time part).

Many thanks to Jens Coldewey <jens_coldewey@acm.org>, Michael Niebler
<mniebler@generali.de> and Charles Lane <lane@duphy4.physics.drexel.edu>
for notifying me about the missing "#include <stdio.h>" statement in
DateCalc.c.

Also many thanks to Frank Dabelstein <frankd@imf.au.dk> for his patch for
adding Danish.

Thanks also go to Steve Tolkin <steve.tolkin@fmr.com> for suggesting that
I should emphasize in the README.txt file that the reading of the INSTALL.txt
file is important, especially if running Perl under Windows. :-)

Many thanks to Martin Vorlaender <martin@radiogaga.harz.de> for notifying
me about the problem with the linker on VMS with identifiers longer than
30 characters, and to Charles Lane <lane@duphy4.physics.drexel.edu> for
sending me a patch!

Many thanks to Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> for providing me with the
necessary information to add Finnish (suomi).

Many thanks to Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com> for his many good suggestions
regarding how to generalize my original, very limited module (based on
Carp.pm) which skips all packages belonging to the "Date::*" hierarchy
(in order to generate an error message from the perspective of the caller),
into a module that can be given a pattern (i.e., a regular expression) of
package names to be skipped. Also many thanks for his suggestions of a
name for this module and for lots of great code he sent!

Also many many thanks to the innumerable contributors of the lists of
American states and abbreviations and many countries' national holidays:

List of U.S. American states and abbreviations courtesy of:

    Jack Applin <neutron@fc.hp.com>
    Troy Arnold <fryman@sonic.net>
    Larry Rosler <lr@hpl.hp.com>
    Mark-Jason Dominus <mjd@plover.com>
    Charles Ford <cford@eudoramail.com>

URLs concerning U.S. American states and abbreviations
thereof sent by:

    Edward Cerruti <ecerruti@teknowledge.com>
    Mark Badolato <mbadolato@cybernox.com>

List of Canadian states and abbreviations courtesy of:

    Larry Rosler <lr@hpl.hp.com>
    Geoff Baskwill <glb@nortel.ca>

List of U.S. American holidays courtesy of:

    David Cassell <cassell@mercury.cor.epa.gov>
    Larry Rosler <lr@hpl.hp.com>
    Anthony Argyriou <anthony@alphageo.com>

List of Canadian holidays courtesy of:

    M Lyons <lyonsm@bob.globalmediacorp.com>

List of Norwegian holidays courtesy of:

    Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>

(From his module "No::Dato" on CPAN)

List of Swedish holidays courtesy of:

    Erland Sommarskog <sommar@algonet.se>

List of British holidays courtesy of:

    Jonathan Stowe <gellyfish@gellyfish.com>

Lists, hints, suggestions and URLs concerning different countries'
holidays were sent to me by:

    Jihad Battikha <jbattikha@highsynth.com> <jihad.battikha@sharewire.com>
    Tim Rueger <rueger@io.com>
    Mark-Jason Dominus <mjd@plover.com>
    Abe Timmerman <abe@ztreet.demon.nl>
    Troy Arnold <fryman@sonic.net>
    Mattias Engdegĺrd <f91-men@nada.kth.se>
    Lincoln Yeoh <lyeoh@pop.jaring.my>
    Bart Lateur <bart.lateur@skynet.be>
    David Chapman <david@dapc.globalnet.co.uk>
    Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
    Ben Coleman <oloryn@mindspring.com>
    Wolfgang Franzki <franzki@sdm.de>
    Rainer Gratias <rainer.gratias@sdm.de>

Thanks to Nelson Ferrari <nferrari@ccsc.com> for suggesting an alternative
"Calendar()" function which starts on Sunday instead of Monday.

Many thanks again to Martin Vorlaender <martin@radiogaga.harz.de> for
testing my modifications in order to satisfy the VMS linker (which was
complaining about identifiers which were longer than 30 characters) and
for his confirmation that now everything works (not counting some
innocuous warnings from xsubpp)!

Thanks a lot to Ramiro Morales <morales@siscard.com.ar> for correcting
my errors in Spanish (and for sending a patch)!

And last but not least, many very special thanks for his tremendous
work to J. David Eisenberg <david@catcode.com> for writing a plain
Perl version of Date::Calc 4.3, available from his home page at
http://catcode.com/date/pcalc.html! (And also from my web site at
http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/download/ and my CPAN directory at
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/S/ST/STBEY/.)

Many extra thanks to Bianca Taylor <bianca@unisolve.com.au> for exploring
the mysteries of (and phoning up a lot of astounded state officials!) the
australian holidays for me, as well as for sending me a list with the
holidays of New Zealand; and many thanks also to her friend John Bolland
<jbolland@mainzeal.co.nz> for compiling this list for New Zealand in the
first place!

Many thanks to ??? ??? <digitaproc@netscape.net> for sending me excellent
feedback and suggestions. He for instance suggested the possibility to
have individual formatting for different date objects, and the ability
to import/export Unix "time" values.

Many special thanks (k) to my girlfriend Ana Maria Lopes Monteiro
<anamaria_l@hotmail.com> for investigating the brazilian holidays
and commemorative days for me!

Very special thanks to the following people for helping in compiling
and verifying the calendar profiles in Date::Calendar::Profiles:

Abe Timmerman <abe@ztreet.demon.nl>
Abigail <abigail@foad.org>
Aldo Calpini <dada@perl.it>
Andie Posey <andie@posey.org>
Arnaud Calvo <arnaud@calvo-france.com>
Arturo Valdes <arturovaldes@usa.net>
Bart Lateur <bart.lateur@skynet.be>
Brian Graham <brian.graham@nec.com.au>
Bruno Tavares <bat@ip.pt> <bat@dustpuppy.ip.pt>
Cas Tuyn <Cas.Tuyn@asml.nl>
Cedric Bouvier <Cedric.Bouvier@ctp.com>
David Landgren <dlandgre@bpinet.com>
Dietmar Rietsch <d.rietsch@prokom.com>
Don Simonetta <don.simonetta@tequinox.com>
Elizabeth Mattijsen <liz@dijkmat.nl>
Erland Sommarskog <sommar@algonet.se>
Flemming Mahler Larsen <mahler@dk.net>
Francois Desarmenien <francois@fdesar.net>
Gordon Fletcher <G.Fletcher@mailbox.gu.edu.au>
H. Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@hccnet.nl>
Hendrik Van Belleghem <beatnik@quickndirty.org>
Herbert Liechti <herbert.liechti@thinx.ch>
Jean Forget <ponder.stibbons@wanadoo.fr>
Jigal van Hemert <jigal.van.hemert@iquip.nl>
Johan Vromans <jvromans@squirrel.nl>
Julien Quint <julien.quint@imag.fr>
Lars Ole <ma-karl2@online.no>
Magnus Bodin <magnus@bodin.org>
Marco Hunn <m_hunn@blue-design.ch>
Mark Keehn <mark.keehn@bigpond.com.au>
Michele Beltrame <mb@io.com>
Pat Waters <pat.waters@dir.qld.gov.au>
Paul Fenwick <pjf@cpan.org> <pjf@mukc.org.au>
Peter G. Martin <pmartin1@bigpond.net.au> <peterm@zeta.org.au>
Remco B. Brink <remco@solbors.no>
Robert McArthur <mcarthur@dstc.edu.au>
Stefaan Colson <stefaan.colson@sitel.com>
Stephane Rondal <rondal@usa.net>
Wim Verhaegen <wim.verhaegen@esat.kuleuven.ac.be>
Jabu Virginia Duma, Giant's Castle Lodge, Drakensberg,
3310 Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Dirk Swart <dirk@clickshare.com> <dirk@tristar.co.za>
Hilda de Jager <Hildadj@gcis.pwv.gov.za>
Hennie Meyer <Henniem@dbs1.pwv.gov.za>
Pe. Amancio <catedral@lkn.com.br>
Inez Hiltrop <inez@hiltrop.de>
Stephen Riehm <Stephen.Riehm@gmx.net>
Graham Crookham <graham.crookham2@sbs.siemens.co.uk>
Philip Newton <pne@writeme.com>

Many thanks to Sunny Paris <sun@weborama.fr> for correcting the french
date format in function "Date_to_Text_Long()"!

Many grateful thanks to Nathaniel Irons <ndi@bumppo.net> for reporting a
problem and for testing a possible solution on his machine regarding the
inclusion of the file "patchlevel.h"!

Many thanks to Daniel Crown <daniel@mailgratis.com.ar> for providing me
with a list of argentinian holidays!

Many thanks to Morten Sickel <Morten.Sickel@nrpa.no> for reporting why
Excel (erroneously) regards 1900 as a leap year, and why therefore one
should use 31-Dec-1899 as the epoch for converting Excel date values.

Many thanks to Georg Mavridis <GM@mavridis.net> for providing me with
the list of greek holidays.

Many thanks also to Guenther Degenfelder <guenther.degenfelder@datev.de>
for showing me his "Karl" calendar display program, which inspired me
to write the example script "anniversaries.pl" (in the "examples"
subdirectory of this distribution).

Many special thanks to Thomas Wegner <toms_email@gmx.de> for
porting version 5.0 of this module to MacOS and MacPerl. His
port (plus some additions - see below) is now version 5.1.

Thanks to Ken Clarke <perlprogrammer@shaw.ca> for his addition to
the documentation concerning the function "Monday_of_Week()".

Many thanks to Nora Elia Castillo <nec@leia.sunmexico.Sun.COM> for
sending me the list of holidays for Mexico!

Thanks to dLux (Balázs Tibor Szabó) <dlux@dlux.hu> for his much
simpler formula in recipe #4 in the "Date::Calc" documentation.

Thanks to Daniel Berger <djberge@qwest.com> for suggesting a
normalization method for delta vectors in Date::Calc::Object,
which has been added in version 5.1.

Thanks to Danny Rathjens <dkr@rathjens.org> for suggesting the
improvement in the documentation of Date::Calc concerning the
paragraph which says that ALL ranges start with 1 - except,
of course, hours, minutes and seconds.

Many thanks to Dr. John Stockton <jrs@merlyn.demon.co.uk> for notifying
me about some spelling, naming and historical errors in the documentation
of Date::Calc, which have been corrected in version 5.1.

Many thanks to Slawomir Szmyd <slawek@msstudio.com.pl> for sending me
the patch to add Polish and the profile of polish holidays.

Many thanks to Robert Kovacs <robi@datanet.hu> for sending me the
patch for adding Hungarian.

Many thanks to Simon Perreault <nomis80@linuxquebec.com> for sending
me corrections for the Quebec/Canada profile in Date::Calendar.

Thanks to Sercan Uslu <sercanuslu@su.sabanciuniv.edu> for sending me
the dates of the turkish holidays in 2002.

Thanks to Ivor Blockley <ufo555@iinet.net.au> for asking for a way to
compare dates which have a time part, and how to test whether two such
dates are more or less than a given time interval apart - the solution
to this problem is now recipe #3 in the Date::Calc documentation.

Many thanks to Ian Zapczynski <ianz@quarterleaf.com> and to Felix
Geerinckx <felix_geerinckx@hotmail.com> for notifying me about a bug
in the method "add_delta_workdays()" (Date::Calendar), which sometimes
causes an incorrect result when adding a negative number of workdays.

The bug hasn't been fixed yet, but there is a workaround which seems
to remedy the problem: First add one workday to the date in question,
and then subtract one workday more than initially.

Many thanks to Mike Swieton <swietonm@student.gvsu.edu> (and many other
people in the past) for sending in a patch so that ToolBox.h will compile
with C++ compilers.

Thanks to Joe Rice <riceja@water-melon.net> and Sridhar Gopal
<sridhar.gopal@bankofamerica.com> for pointing out that the formula
for Labor Day in the U.S. apparently was wrong; it returned
September 8th in 2003 but Labor Day in that year actually was on
September 1st. It should obviously be "1/Mon/Sep" instead.

Many thanks to M.S. Tawfik <mstawfik@optonline.net> for finding a
bug in the "init()" method of Date::Calendar::Year when the year
starts with a Sunday (such as in 1995) and for sending a patch!

Thanks to George Cooke <quatto@hotmail.com> for raising the question
of how to "normalize" the results of the "Delta_YMD()" function to
show only positive values, the answer to which has been included as
a "recipe" in the documentation of Date::Calc.

Thanks to Joachim Ansorg <joachim@ansorgs.de> for sending me the
necessary information to add Romanian to the list of languages
supported by Date::Calc.

Many thanks to Peter Prymmer <PPrymmer@factset.com> for suggesting
a work-around for the problems that can arise when a locale other
than "C" is used!

Thanks to Olle E. Johansson <oej@edvina.net> for sending corrections
for the Swedish calendar profile.

Thanks to Harold van Oostrom <perl@lanceerplaats.nl> for sending in a
fix for the Polish language in Date::Calc. Also many thanks for his patch
to make Date::Calc ready for UTF-8, which unfortunately I haven't had
the time yet to evaluate.

Many thanks also to Sven Geisler <sgeisler@aeccom.com> for sending me
corrections for the profile and official references for ALL federal
states of Australia.

Many thanks to Tony Mountifield <tony@mountifield.org> for sending
in a patch to enable Date::Calc to handle negative values of time_t,
for dates before the Epoch. I decided not to include it at this time
first because the system functions such as localtime, gmtime and
mktime are considered legacy functions due to their rather restricted
range (Date::Calc's own functions operate on a much broader range),
and second because it cost so much effort to make these functions
work in Date::Calc under Unix and Windows as well as under MacOS
(Classic), that the risk of breaking things is just too high, not
to mention the time and effort needed to get it right again, which
I can't spend at the moment, unfortunately. So please use Date::Calc's
own functions instead, which cover the intended range of dates anyway.

Thanks a lot to Can Bican <can@ripe.net>, Ziya Suzen <ziya@ripe.net>,
Henk Uijterwaal <henk@ripe.net> and the Amsterdam Perl Mongers for
providing me with more detailed information concerning the
"Bevrijdingsdag" (5th of May) in the Netherlands.

Many thanks to Vetle Roeim <vetler@opera.com> for sending some more
commemorative days (some companies give half a day off) for the
Norwegian profile.


