time_t

[Charles Day]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
[snip]

>
> Actually, except for GMT-12 or GMT+12, no, you do NOT need the time zone
> to figure out the date from 1200 UTC.   However as I've said now three
> times, GnuCash doesn't use 1200 UTC currently, it uses 0000 local, which
> (as I've said a half dozen times) I consider a bug that should get fixed.
>

I don't see how 1200 UTC would work in New Zealand or any of the other
countries on GMT+12, not to mention Tonga. You enter a date of July 2, then
GnuCash converts it to July 2, 1200 UTC. Then when you close GnuCash and
reopen it, the date now displays as July 3 (July 2, 1200 UTC + 12 hours). So
this would actually goof up New Zealanders; even the ones who never leave
their time zone! Am I misunderstanding?

I think Graham's point about a distinction between the two types is
important. A date, which is all we allow the user to provide, represents a
time range. A timestamp represents a fixed point in time. If we are not
going to allow users to enter a timestamp, then we probably shouldn't be
converting it into one. On the other hand, if we are going to allow
timestamp entry then we have some code changes to think about (see my RFC).

[snip]

>
> -derek
> --
>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>

-Charles