NavList:

Tony, you wrote:
"unfortunately - it is rather difficult to do a calendar date to JD convertion. At least - if off-line, on paper."

Try some cases. It really isn't difficult at all. A Julian Date is just a day count. All we want to know is the number of elapsed days. Hell, you could use the Maya Long Count just as well... Any system that counts off days. Julian Date calculations look fairly tricky when you ponder a formula designed to cover centuries. But if we stay inside this century, the calculation is simple enough that any child could learn to do it.

Can you stay in this century? I really recommend it. I've been to the 22nd century, and it's nowhere near as much fun as it sounds. Cybernetically-enhanced squirrels take over the earth in the year 2098, and the human species has been enslaved, reduced to a squalid life of nut-farming and nut-delivery to the great squirrel cities, like Squirrelopolis and New Squeek City. But as long as you're content to work in the eighty-year period from 2018 to 2098, you should be good. And Julian Date differences are a snap in that range. As our future squirrel-overloads would say, "it's an easy nut to crack!"

Heh.

Frank Reed