Expanded date and time handling in COBOL (was RE: Layout Hell-o)

For those who are actually interested in the topic of time and date handling
in future standards for COBOL:

The proposal for enhancements to the current COBOL standard to incorporate
the handling of dates and times in ISO format, formally approved by J4 at
its July meeting, is now available on the J4 web site at
www.cobolportal.com/j4/ .  The document J4/04-0120 is entitled "ISO
8601:2000 date format intrinsic functions".

Although J4 has approved this document, the committee has elected not to
forward it to the project editor for incorporation into the current working
draft of the 2008 standard until after the WG4 meeting in October in The
Hague where it, along with the other proposals for the 2008 standard, will
be presented and discussed.  The document is directly applicable against
ISO/IEC 1989:2002, the current COBOL standard, as well as to the draft
proposed base document available from that same website (this through the
artifice of avoiding page-number references in favor of heading/topic
references).

A related document, J4/04-0143 entitled "Definitions for Day-of-W Form
and Offset Forms", had previously been posted.  It is a follow-on to
J4/04-0120 that presumes its presence in an updated working draft.  It has
*not* yet been approved by J4; discussion of its contents is scheduled for
the next J4 meeting in December.

-Chuck Stevens