RFC2: Date/Time proposal

[Derek Atkins]

"Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart at gathman.org> writes:

> On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> Does it really matter?
>>
>> First, we're assuming that we ARE going to implement that feature,
>> which we don't necessarily need to.
>
> The current datafile format has a problem when the user switches
> timezones.  While the saved timestamps are restored correctly, thanks
> to the included timezone, the *dates* change.  The only work around
> at the moment is to load gnucash through a script which sets the TZ
> environment variable to a fixed value (the value used to start the
> gnucash datafile).

Sorry, but you're mixing apples and kumquats.  It's not the data
file format that has issues; it's the fact that GnuCash:

1) Chose midnight "localtime" as the timestamp to store for a transaction, and
2) uses the local timezone to convert the timestamp for display

Both of these issues could be fixed WITHOUT changing the data file
format at all.

You're right that it would require updates to the format so that
old dates got updated.  I don't see that being a huge deal to fix.

> Now, there is talk of an optional feature to enter actual time of
> day on transactions (has anyone asked for this?).  The obvious way

Yes.  See bug #89439

-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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