On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Alan Watson <[email protected]> wrote: > >> We use "TAI" for lack of a better term. > > Um, a better term is "The number of seconds elapsed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 > as measured in the atomic time scale then maintained by the BIH. This time > scale was later renamed TAI, and it has been maintained by the BIPM since > 1988." > > Or if that's too long winded, try: "The number of seconds elapsed since > 1970-01-01 00:00:00 as measured in the TAI time scale and its predecessor."
Sorry, I mean to write that I intended to clear up the language. >> The number of UTC seconds is the same as the number of TAI seconds. > > Yes. My point is that the organization that defines TAI has raised the > possibility that it might be suppressed in favor of UTC. So, in 40 years > people might not be familiar with the term "TAI second" and "TAI time scale". > I'm just offering this remark as a very mild warning. If you're happy to use > these terms, which I would expect will be widely understood for at least the > next 20 years even if TAI is formally suppressed tomorrow, then that's > perfectly fine with me. I think in 40 years people are likely to remember "TAI" better than "BIH", and probably "BIPM" as well, but we can take the long-winded description here, thanks. But my reply was mostly intended to emphasize that we're only talking about the name here wrt TAI vs UTC, and that you're _not_ talking about dropping TAI in favor of posix as some might suggest. -- Alex _______________________________________________ Scheme-reports mailing list [email protected] http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports
