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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!Alpern.Ibm-Sj@Rand-Relay.ARPA
From: Alpern.Ibm-Sj@Rand-Relay.ARPA (David Alpern)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: UTC Time stamping
Message-ID: <224@hou3c.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 31-Jan-84 16:19:48 EST
Article-I.D.: hou3c.224
Posted: Tue Jan 31 16:19:48 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Feb-84 10:35:31 EST
Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Lines: 38

Pardon me, but I think we have a while before we have to worry
about how people on Mars would timestamp their messages.
 
Like Benson, I as well use the zone in the timestamp to get an
idea of the location of the sender.  Sure, it's not 100% accurate,
and maybe it'd be nice if a user could specify the zone that would
be best to use on messages he's sending.  This is something we
might consider when writing mail sending programs.  No change to
any of the "standards" is involved here.
 
However, I somehow missed hearing about the problem that the use
of zones other than UTC leads to.  Was there one?  If so, someone
please resend a copy of the original message to me.
 
If not:  Many of the mailers around are used more for internal (within
some school or company) than external mailing.  If I'm on MIT-EECS, and
get a message from someone on MIT-ML, I care how recently he sent the
message (local time) more than I do what Universal Time it was.
 
RFC 822 does specify a human readable header, and not a machine readable
one, in general.  For example, consider the usefulness of the "name:;"
nomenclature for a distribution list to any program without access to
the original list file.  I would much prefer if any program that tried
to deal with the time for some reason (does anyone???) had to convert
than that the mail sending program and mail reading program had to
convert at either end for human use.
 
Again, I'd be interested in hearing why this discussion seems important,
i.e. what we're trying to prevent or solve.  So many mailers aren't
even 822 compatible when it comes to dates that I would think the zone
issue would be rather minor.
 
With apologies for flaming,
 
Dave