Excellent presentation, Marcus! Excellent argument, Ed! I hope the folks at Torino recognize the need for a much more open process, broader participation and further discussion, and stick to the careful, logical, approaches that Marcus and Ed recommend.
Neal McBurnett http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/ Internet2 Marcus wrote: > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/c-time/torino2003/ On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 06:00:14PM +0100, Ed Davies wrote: > Ed Davies wrote on 2003-05-27 13:56 UTC: > > > Slightly more relevantly: I was a bit surprised that you did not > > put more emphasis on the need to distinguish the different types > > of time scales an application program can ask for from an operating > > system, as your ctime library highlights. > > Markus Kuhn replied: > > > I had thought about this, but I concluded that this would be out of the > > scope of the ITU-R, who are in the business of standardizing time signal > > broadcasts, and not operating system APIs. > > Fair point, but if I might summarise what I think is a > slightly generalised version of your argument: > > 1. There's no single perfect timescale for all application > requirement combinations (keeps close to UT1, SI seconds, > 86 400 second days, etc) - because some combinations of > requirements are contradictory. > > 2. We need to make up timescales for specific combinations > of requirements not catered for by existing timescales > (e.g., UTS if you are willing to relax the SI second > requirement but don't want to use UT1 for sensible > reasons). > > 3. We have to live with lots of timescales - please fix the > radio signals to make this easier. > > You cover points 2 and 3 well but I think rather assume point > 1 which is a pity as you are in a good position to illustrate > it. If this point was already well understood then perhaps > there wouldn't be the same pressure to "fix" UTC in the forlorn > hope of somehow making it perfect. > > Ed.
