RFC2: Date/Time proposal

[Derek Atkins]

"Charles Day" <cedayiv at gmail.com> writes:

>> This is likely to become messy in the datafile: some dates without times
>> and some with times. When we read this data in, we would have to keep track
>> of which dates have times and which do not. I'd think it would be much
>> simpler to create a default time and always write out the time (assuming, of
>> course, that the user had not specified a time). And since the timezone is
>> always known, there will never be any ambiguity or shifting dates.
>>
>
> I believe several users have expressed that they do not want a time written
> to their data file if they never actually entered one. That's one of the
> things I am proposing to support with this proposal. Saving defaulted
> transaction times would mean that when you read the file back in, you
> wouldn't know which times were user-entered and which times were defaulted.

Here's where I need to disagree.  I'd like to see as little change
to the data file format as possible!

Right now we're storing an ISO Date-Time string.  We should continue
to do so, even in the cases where the user did NOT input an actual
"time".

I really think that data file compatibility is also important.

Personally I'm willing to forego any time zone support at all and just
always use/display GMT dates.  But we can still store a timestamp and
ignore the time portion.

-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
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