In other words, people in Taiwan can refer to the current year as either 1999 or the 88th year of the Republic of China. It is simply a matter of personal preference. Some programmers are dealing with the Y2K problem by programming computers to interpret ROC year-dates as Western year-dates.
譬如民國八十七年，就將電腦主機系統日期設定為一九八七（而非正確的一九九八）。