time_t

[Derek Atkins]

Quoting Charles Day <cedayiv at gmail.com>:

> 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?

* sigh *   Unfortunately no.  Doing a little research it appears that
timezones go from GMT+14 to GMT-10.  At least I cannot find a GMT-11 or
GMT-12 timezone.   But right now it is the same time, but one day apart
at GMT+14 (e.g. Kiritimati, Christmas Islands) vs. GMT-10 (Hawaii).  Is
there some (landed) part of the world at GMT-11 or GMT-12?

Unfortunately that means there isn't really a single timestamp we could
choose.  The best we could do is choose 10:01:00 GMT, which would give
us the correct answer everywhere but at GMT+14.

> 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).

Well, I still believe that we SHOULD let users enter the timestamp.

(I must've missed your RFC)

-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