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macalter wrote:

While I was at it, I tested my kiwiTrees site and in fact, the ISO date isn’t recognized. It took 2014 01 25 and formatted to 25 Jan 2014 in edit mode and January 25, 2014 in display mode.

I must be missing something in the translation from Canadian to English 🙂 It is most certainly “recognized”. Your own words prove that. It is accepted and converted to the required genealogical standards perfectly correctly.

If the ISO date is 2014 01 25, and kiwitrees displays it as 25 Jan 2014 in edit mode and January 25, 2014 in display mode then it is working exactly as required.

There are two issues:
1 – The “edit mode” you refer to is in fact the GEDCOM standard. That cannot be changed for as long as we continue to conform to the standard (which is likely to be at least as long as I live).

2 – The “display mode” is set by a language variable.
For the US it is currently set to January 25, 2014
For GB and Canada it is currently set to 25 January 2014
For French it is Janvier. 25 2014
Other languages have their own versions.

As a language variable you are free, via a custom language file, to set the display to whatever you prefer. I have in the past chosen to use “Jan 25, 2014” on my own site. You could certainly use ISO for display if you wish.

One other small point. “2014 01 25” is not a valid ISO date. It should be either 2014-01-25 or 20140125 (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601)

The problem with it for genealogical purposes is that it is based on a modified form of the Gregorian calendar (using a different base year) which makes it difficult for other non-Gregorian calendars such as early French, or Hjiri, Jalali, Jewish calendars etc..

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info