You would think I would know this but, if it exists anywhere in the D'niverse, I do not recall seeing it.

Does anyone know how a D'ni date and time would be written in the D'ni language?

In English characters I normally use something like this... Leesahn 25, 9666 - 04.23.05.00 which was the date and time I was entering this post.

I was toying with an idea and needed to know how this would be written in D'ni.

We know how dates were written, from the indirect evidence of Gehn's journals on Riven. An example of an entry there is dated "82.2.13". The journals are written in English (to keep the Rivenese from being able to read them), and apparently the dates are Hindu-Arabicizations of the corresponding D'ni numbers for the hahr, vílee, and yahr of the date of the entry.

We know this for the hahr (year) at least, since this is given in abbreviated form, leaving out the "century". In D'ni numbers, which are base twenty-five, the "centuries" ([1][0][0] years) are actually 625 years. It was the 15th of these when Gehn was on Riven (and it still is), so the year written in D'ni as [3][7] (in base 25, converted by Gehn to "82") stands for [15][3][7] or "9457". So in D'ni that date would apparently be written [3][7].[2].[13], or if one wanted to give the hahr in full: [15][3][7].[2].[13]. For "Leesahn 25, 9666" you would write in D'ni numerals: [11][16].[3].[1][0].

I don't know if we have an example of a time of day written out in D'ni numbers -- though I suppose one could logically extend the above system by adding the number of the different sub-units of the yahr separated similarly by D'ni periods, to give the exact time.

Shorah,
Kh'reestrefah

Ah yes. I remember those Riven journals and some discussion over the proper interpretation of the years. I was wondering if there were any references anywhere in Uru although I have never found any. If that is the only reference to a date format in all of our known D'ni lore, then that's the way I will go. I suppose I can roll my own guess about time unless RAWA wants to chime in.

OK, if I understand it, to convert the year 9666 into D'ni, I have to first calculate the hahrtee fahrah (D'ni century) by INT(9666/625)=15 which leaves 9666-INT(9666/625)*625=291 hahrtee (years). So 9666 = 15 hartee fahrah plus 291 hartee or or (15)(11)(16) in D'ni numbers.

Wondering if they used a zero placeholder for the hartee to force it to two digits. For time, it seems that they did not use the zero at all but rather counted 1 to 25 and back to 1. The clock in Bevin uses the X character for 25 instead of (1)(0). For that matter, did they use the same convention for dates? It makes sense to me that the turn of the last century should have been (15)(0)(0). Too many questions and not enough answers... where is RAWA when we need him?

That algorithm will certainly work, as far as it goes. In other words starting with a decimal number, do long division by 625, and the quotient is the "fahrah" digit of the D'ni numeral. Of course then you need to take the remainder and do long division by 25 -- the quotient will be the "fahsee" digit and the remainder will be the last digit of the D'ni numeral. This procedure can be somewhat simplified by building the D'ni number in the opposite direction with repeated long division by 25. After each division the remainder is a digit in the final result and the quotient is used as the dividend in the next step. This has the advantage that you can apply it to indefinitely large decimal numbers without knowing the multiples of 25.

An algorithm with even simpler steps is as follows. Multiply the original decimal number by 4 (e.g. 9666 * 4 = 38664). Take the last two digits of this interim result and divide by 4 (64 / 4 = 16). This is the last digit [16] of the D'ni number. Take the rest of the interim result and repeat the same steps (386 * 4 = 1544; 44 / 4 = 11). This is the next digit [11] of the D'ni number. Repeat until the rest of the interim result is less than 25 (in this case 15) and this is the first digit [15] of the D'ni number: [15][11][16].

I suspect that the reason the Bevin clock uses the X symbol for 25 is so that it will fit into the same size physical space as the other "digits" on the clock. Of course, it may have been use of numerals in mechanical devices like this that led to the invention of a special symbol [x] for 25 to use in place of [1][0] when convenient (or its retention from an older system, perhaps). This might imply that the use of [25] was dictated more by the physical context than "linguistic" conventions, so that it would not necessarily apply to writing down times; but there could be an influence on some people's usage.

Shorah,
Kh'reestrefah

There has been a lot of speculation as the the usage of the 3 ways to indicate 25, (1)(0), or "X" or "/". The slash symbol can be found on the ruler embossed on the edge of the Minkata journal in the Library. It has been suggested that on measurement of distance, the "/" indicates a repeating sequence of 1-25 units of distance. It has also been suggested that this is simply an error someone made in using the symbol for 25.

For time, the convention seems to be that zero is never used so the "X" is used to keep the numbers to a single D'ni digit from 1 - 25.

Since I was only concerned with dates in the current D'ni century, I used a quick and dirty conversion routine which is obviouly not useful for generally converting numbers of any value. The 15th "century" still has over 300 years to go so I was not concerned that it would break on other numbers.