NAME
    Date::Easter - Calculates Easter for any given year

SYNOPSIS
      use Date::Easter;
      ($month, $day) = julian_easter(1752);
      ($month, $day) = easter(1753);
      ($month, $day) = gregorian_easter(1753);
      ($month, $day) = orthodox_easter(1823);

DESCRIPTION
    Calculates Easter for a given year.

    easter() is, for the moment, an alias to gregorian_easter(), since
    that's what most people use now. The thought was to somehow know which
    of the other methods to call, that that proved to be rather sticky.

    Date::Easter provides the following functions:

  julian_easter

        ( $month, $day ) = julian_easter( $year );

    Returns the month and day of easter in the given year, in the Julian
    calendar.

  gregorian_easter

        ( $month, $day ) = gregorian_easter( $year );

    Returns the month and day of easter in the given year, in the Gregorian
    calendar, which is what most of the world uses.

  easter

        ( $month, $day ) = easter( $year );

    Returns the month and day of easter in the given year, in the Gregorian
    calendar, which is what most of the world uses.

  orthodox_easter

        ( $month, $day ) = orthodox_easter( $year );

    Returns the month and day of easter in the given year, in the Orthodox
    calendar.

    From code by Pascalis Ligdas, based on original code by Apostolos
    Syropoulos

AUTHOR
    Rich Bowen <rbowen@rcbowen.com>

To Do
    Since the dates that various countries switched to the Gregorian
    calendar vary greatly, it's hard to figure out when to use which method.
    Perhaps some sort of locale checking would be cool?

    I need to test the Julian easter calculations, but I'm a little confused
    as to the difference between the Orthodox Easter and the Julian Easter.
    I need to read some more.

Other Comments
    Yes, Date::Manip already has code in it to do this. But Date::Manip is
    very big, and rather slow. I needed something faster and smaller, and
    did not need all that other stuff. And I have a real interest in date
    calculations, so I thought this would be fun. Date::Manip is a very cool
    module. I use it myself.

    See also http://www.pauahtun.org/CalendarFAQ/cal/node3.html for more
    details on calculating Easter.

    And many thanks to Simon Cozens who provided me with the code for the
    orthodox_easter function.

    The tests are taken from a table at
    http://www.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/eastcalc.htm

  Change Log

        $Log: Readme,v $
        Revision 1.4  2001/07/12 03:40:12  rbowen
        Readme in sync with POD

        Revision 1.11  2001/07/12 03:39:51  rbowen
        Added tests. Updated documentation.

        Revision 1.10  2001/07/12 03:07:58  rbowen
        Documentation update, mostly, and some code cleanup.

        Revision 1.4  2001/04/20 02:09:09  rbowen
        Brought documentation, README, up to date with code.

        Revision 1.3  2001/04/20 01:50:17  rbowen
        Added orthodox_easter method.

