On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Rob Seaman <[email protected]> wrote:
> Whatever the design parameters of new APIs, e.g., floating-point or not, they > will only succeed if the underlying conceptual model resembles the > real-world. Steve Allen's concept of how such interfaces should interact > with the system of timezones: > > > http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/futureofutc/preprints/45_AAS_11-681_Allen.pdf > > is 1) written down and has references, and is 2) conformant with the > real-world. On the other hand, the timezone assumptions underlying the > "Draft Revision to ITU-R Recommendation TF.460-6" are neither. We need to > revise the revision. It's a good proposal, but I think the principal disagreement lies in their choice of how to handle as-yet-unannounced intercalary seconds. Steve Allen has opted for my #2 ("Correctly account for past leap seconds, and ignore yet-to-be-disseminated future leap seconds when converting EST/EDT/UTC-specified moments into a timestamp"). PHK has chosen #3 ("Correctly account for past leap seconds, and bomb out with an error when converting future EST/EDT/UTC-specified moments"). I think it's useful to make that disagreement explicit. I don't think either choice #2 or #3 is more "conformant with the real world" than the other. Of course Steve's is nice because it doesn't require modifying existing applications. -Keith _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
