User blog:Phlox/Date refactoring

At first there was simply a date format field. An approximate year and approximate month was added. The year and month field was thereafter derived from the date field, and guaranteed to exist.
 * Problem: it was not possible to indicate dates for which the exact month and day was unknown. It would just fill in a day and month- usually the day and month of the edit.
 * Problem: sorting a report on a field requires that the field have some value. Reports would not display records that had a null dates or years.
 * Some contributors set the year and month parameters or form fields not understanding the parameters would be ignored if date was present.
 * A form entry for a date has a bewildering number of boxes to fill out to specify a date.
 * SMW forms pick lists for date fields are not localized. EG, if user preference is spanish, the month list still gives January, February, etc.
 * Implied

Revision:
 * Internationalize months by using numbers for months.
 * keep the date components separate. year, month, day, hour (24hour), minute.  (GMT/UTC)
 * Example scenarios for hour/minute: birth date/time since horoscope folks seem very interested in this. A sequence of events in a battle or at a long event like a wedding would require hours and minutes for a proper timeline to be constructed.


 * Eliminate date and date-time entry values on form as well as the corresponding parameters. Hereafter, the date is assembled from the components.  Unknown values are set to lowest legal, eg January 1 at 0:00.  A full date parameter is no longer accepted.


 * Docs clarification: Omitting day does not imply circa.  For instance, "Circa November 1941" could mean October or December if Circa is clicked.  If not, then this means that the event definitely happened in November, but the exact day is not specified.