Hebrew calendar software creators: can you notify this list when updating the calendar?

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

"Nadav Har'El" <nyh at math.technion.ac.il> writes:

> I still believe that the whole approach of having holidays of a single year
> (it doesn't matter if 2007 or 2010) is wrong. It not only means that the
> distro needs to update this list every year, it also means that you can't
> find out when next year's holidays are (and sometimes "next year" could be
> next month).
>
> So I'd look for a way to somehow use a "calendar.judaic" file which contains
> holidays for multiple years (I have no idea if that's possible).

It must be. I am not an expert on Hebrew calendar, but I use XEmacs
calendar and I have never had any problem finding out holiday dates
and stuff for any year, not just the current one.

A quick check shows that the solution is in 

/usr/share/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/calendar/cal-hebrew.el

(there is a corresponding GNU emacs file), which says

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

;;; cal-hebrew.el --- calendar functions for the Hebrew calendar

;; Copyright (C) 1995, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
;;   Free Software Foundation, Inc.

;; Author: Nachum Dershowitz <nachum at cs.uiuc.edu>
;;      Edward M. Reingold <reingold at cs.uiuc.edu>
;; Maintainer: Glenn Morris <rgm at gnu.org>
;; Keywords: calendar
;; Human-Keywords: Hebrew calendar, calendar, diary

<GNU license stuff snipped - OG>

;;; Synched up with: FSF Emacs 22 CVS 2007-03-30

;;; Commentary:

;; This collection of functions implements the features of calendar.el and
;; diary.el that deal with the Hebrew calendar.

;; Technical details of all the calendrical calculations can be found in
;; ``Calendrical Calculations: The Millennium Edition'' by Edward M. Reingold
;; and Nachum Dershowitz, Cambridge University Press (2001).

;; Comments, corrections, and improvements should be sent to
;;  Edward M. Reingold               Department of Computer Science
;;  (217) 333-6733                   University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
;;  reingold at cs.uiuc.edu             1304 West Springfield Avenue
;;                                   Urbana, Illinois 61801

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

So, the people who implemented it for X?Emacs wrote a book on how to
do it - easy to find on Amazon as

http://www.amazon.com/Calendrical-Calculations-Nachum-Dershowitz/dp/0521702380/ref=dp_ob_title_bk?ie=UTF8&qid=1274819022&sr=1-1

- and I do not see anything in the code that would limit it to a
particular year. 

Without any further research, I have to agree with Nadav - anybody who
does anything year-specific does something wrong.

By the way, the code seems to give the right "parasha" name - another
question that I recall was asked on this forum relatively recently.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org