On Fri 2006/01/13 16:45:33 -0000, Michael Deckers wrote
in a message to: LEAPSECS@ROM.USNO.NAVY.MIL

>   Right, UTC timestamps are ambiguous (in the sense that the

... would have been ambiguous ...

>   corresponding TAI value is not known) in the vicinity of
>   positive leap seconds, and the notation with a second
>   field >= 60 s is one (elegant) way to disambiguate.

... had not the variable-radix notation not been introduced.

>   Another way to disambiguate is to record the value of DTAI
>   together with a UTC (or TAI) timestamp. Such a method is
>   standardised in ISO 8601 for denoting offsets from UTC,
>   but only with minute resolution. I seem to remember that
>   Clive Feather once proposed this for an extension to the
>   C programming language.

... where UTC here is taken to be in the usual (fixed-radix) sexagesimal
format.

Mark Calabretta
ATNF

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