I would not fully agree with Tom Van Baak. True, most of the users on
the planet
have no need for sub-second accuracy, except for systems that they have
no internal
access to (e.g. GPS). But usually they have a requirement to not be
presented with
representations that most software cannot handle, such as
11:59:60. A few might have a requirement to deal with such a representation
when they have the misfortune to encounter it.
Many users, or the software they rely on without understanding the
underlying details,
have a requirement that time increase monotonically, so they may need
sub-second precision
without needing sub-second accuracy.
Gerard Ashton
On 1/28/2011 3:42 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote, in part:
I partly ask because for the class of users who are willing to be
close enough to UTC (say within 1 second), there are no leap
second issues, ever. This covers most users on the planet. We
know their PC's, laptops, phones, watches, and email say "UTC",
but it's really just an 86400 clock that's close enough to UTC.
This flexibility means they are perfectly happy with non-leap
API's. There is no need for smoothing -- under the API's there
already is enough jitter, wander, smoothing, NTP, clock setting
and resetting. In all these cases there is no need for an additional
layer of micro-step or milli-step smoothing. The user has no
requirement of sub-second precision and the APIs meet that
expectation.
/tvb
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