Mechanism to provide tai-utc.dat locally
Hello, I just joined the leap seconds list. I wrote the time package for the Haskell programming language. http://semantic.org/TimeLib/ I include code for making conversions between TAI and UTC, given a leap-second table. I also include code for parsing a tai-utc.dat file into a leap-second table. I do not, however, simply include a leap- second table as any program compiled with one would be out of date after six months. This has led me to consider run-time methods of obtaining leap-second information, and how that might be standardised for use by software authors. For instance, I imagine a software package that established a well-known place in the directory hierarchy to find tai-utc.dat and perhaps other earth data files, and was responsible for keeping them up to date. Other software could then make use of the package without each having to implement their own mechanism. Does this strike people as worthwhile? Does anyone know of an existing effort along these lines? Thanks, -- Ashley Yakeley Seattle WA
Re: Mechanism to provide tai-utc.dat locally
In message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ashley Yakeley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: : Hello, I just joined the leap seconds list. I wrote the time : package for the Haskell programming language. : http://semantic.org/TimeLib/ : : I include code for making conversions between TAI and UTC, given a : leap-second table. I also include code for parsing a tai-utc.dat file : into a leap-second table. I do not, however, simply include a leap- : second table as any program compiled with one would be out of date : after six months. : : This has led me to consider run-time methods of obtaining leap-second : information, and how that might be standardised for use by software : authors. For instance, I imagine a software package that established : a well-known place in the directory hierarchy to find tai-utc.dat and : perhaps other earth data files, and was responsible for keeping : them up to date. Other software could then make use of the package : without each having to implement their own mechanism. : : Does this strike people as worthwhile? Does anyone know of an : existing effort along these lines? One can find the leap data from NIST that's up to date: ftp://time.nist.org/leap-seconds.list I believe that there are other places for this information as well. The problem is that often times one has systems that aren't guarnateed to be connected to the internet, but are connected to GPS so that this number can be obtained. Other problems arise from systems that are intermittently operational (like in sparing situations) that may be off over many leap seconds... Warner
