date interval handling is toast

[Christopher Browne]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001 10:15:29 PST, the world broke into rejoicing as
Christian Stimming <stimming@uclink.berkeley.edu>  said:

> That brings up another interesting question. What will happen if I
> switch time zones regularly on my machine? Are the transactions
> recorded in localtime? I think at least the reports are created in
> localtime. Would that give me a different set of transactions
> depending on the timezone I'm in right now? A few hints from Dave or
> grib on where we use localtime and where UTC/GMT would be helpful.

I sure hope the time used is UTC; that represents an unambiguous
statement of "When?" and you won't get bitten if there are people in
different timezones working with a common instance...

Looking at a sample from a data file:
    <transaction>
      <restore>
        <guid>20b03aea85fa4f987000fa717c6ed177</guid>
        <num>DEP</num>
        <date-posted>
          <s>1999-09-22 11:00:00 -0500</s>
        </date-posted>
        <date-entered>
          <s>2001-03-21 08:55:23 -0600</s>
          <ns>675332000</ns>
        </date-entered>
        <description>CD + Tshirt Sales</description>
        <slots>
          <s>
            <k>notes</k>
            <string>September Meeting Results</string>
          </s>
        </slots>
        <split>
          <guid>423adf022e843849833a36e659e648b8</guid>
          <memo>September Meeting Results</memo>
          <reconcile-state>n</reconcile-state>
          <value>-43000/100</value>
          <quantity>-43000/100</quantity>
          <account>4dd736ebc4780abeecfe8525f1393be7</account>
        </split>
        <split>
          <guid>383697bdaf35aba5e62c76bd1d0b4204</guid>
          <memo>September Meeting Results</memo>
          <reconcile-state>c</reconcile-state>
          <value>43000/100</value>
          <quantity>43000/100</quantity>
          <account>ab7117519f598599d03036c990ef1b30</account>
        </split>
      </restore>
    </transaction>

This sure looks like it is doing a reasonably appropriate thing:

- Unfortunately, this seems to be presenting the time in terms of
  local time;

- Fortunately, by indicating the relative timezone, it's easy enough
  to adjust to get UTC or whatever zone is appropriate locally...
--
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