Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hou3c.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!clyde!burl!hou3c!v.wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA From: v.wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Several questions/comments on time zones Message-ID: <193@hou3c.UUCP> Date: Sat, 28-Jan-84 04:24:39 EST Article-I.D.: hou3c.193 Posted: Sat Jan 28 04:24:39 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 5-Feb-84 04:12:42 EST Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) Lines: 81 Here are several questions/comments on time zone abbreviations and usages. I am including all of this in one message for the sake of con- venience. Please feel free to comment on only some of what I say below, even if you don't have anything to say about all my points. Also, I would especially like some feedback from the people who live (or have lived) in the areas involved, and who therefore have first- hand knowledge. Some of this material may seem out of place, given that we haven't been arguing these issues lately. However, I hope that whoever out there is planning possible future revisions of mail standards will take note of this message and any authoritative answers it generates. (1) It has been suggested a few times that time stamps be expressed either in UTC or as the number of seconds past a given starting point. I feel, however, that such an approach would be less than ideal, because the sender's local time of day may be a useful piece of information for the recipient to have. For example, suppose all "Date" lines had to show time in UTC. If I were to send a message between 1600 and midnight (according to my local time, PST), the "Date" line would indicate the next day, since 1600 PST = 0000 UTC. If my message's body contained a "relative" time expression such as "today", the recipient might be confused as to which day I meant unless he knew my physical location (and thus my local time zone). (Admittedly, this same problem could occur today, in cases where a user and his computer are widely separated. However, I would assume that the local time of the user and the computer are the same more often than not.) (2) People have discussed which term is "most" correct for the standard time zone around the prime meridian -- UTC, UT, or GMT. (a) What do the British, Irish, and whoever else falls in this time zone call their time? (Judging from "Date" lines in messages from UCL-CS, I would assume the answer to my question is "GMT"; however, could someone from the UK or Ireland speak up and say definitively?) (b) Assuming that "Date" lines are to reflect the sender's local time, it seems wrong to make the British and Irish say "UT" or "UTC" if their local custom is to say "GMT". If other people somewhere want to use "UT" or "UTC", maybe the only equitable solution is to give all three abbreviations equal status. (c) This entire discussion becomes moot, of course, if we all end up using numeric offsets instead of time-zone abbreviations. (3) Would some Canadian on this list confirm or correct the following time zone abbreviations: NST/NDT (Newfoundland); AST/ADT (Atlan- tic); and YST/YDT (Yukon)? Also, am I correct in assuming that the Alaskans too use YST/YDT for Yukon time? (4) Does Hawaii use the abbreviations HST and HDT? For that matter, do they even have daylight savings time in Hawaii? (Hawaii's close enough to the equator that I suppose it might not make sense for them to use daylight savings time.) (5) According to John Covert at DEC-Marlboro (message of 26 Jan 84), Alaska is down to two time zones now (UTC-10 for the Aleutians and UTC-9 for the rest of the state). Are the people in the Aleutians going to end up calling their time zone HST/HDT (since it's the same as Hawaii time)? Or will they use AHST/AHDT ("Alaska/Hawaii")? Or even AST/ADT ("Alaska", or "Aleutian")? If they decide to call it AST/ADT (and thus create a conflict with Atlantic time), I say forget it -- the Atlantic time zone has first dibs on the abbreviation (and more people, too!), and the Aleutians can use a numeric offset if they don't like HST/HDT. -- Rich