time_t

[Charles Day]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 4:24 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> 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)
>

No one has responded to the RFC yet. I assumed that was because everyone has
gone to bed in Europe. But maybe it didn't get mailed out to everybody?

It did make it to the archive:
https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2008-July/023479.html


>
>
> -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