Suggestion: HTTP Timezone header

A suggestion for HTTP: that clients send a Timezone header in the request,
describing the timezone of the user. This would be very useful
when presenting dates and times to the user; I would envisage using this
in a CGI script that generated dates on the fly.

The header would be a request header.
Syntax:

Timezone = "Timezone" ":" zone

zone would have the RFC 822 definition:
zone = numeric-zone | ascii-zone | military-zone
numeric-zone = ( "+" | "-" ) 4digit
ascii-zone = 2*3alpha
military-zone = alpha

I would suggest that the numeric form be recommended; it may even be better to
only allow this form.

There is the obvious problem of how you can determine the true time zone for
a user. As a sensible default, the client program could use the timezone of the
computer on which it is running. Alternatively, I could imagine a client
having an option the user can set to choose the timezone.

 David Robinson. (drtr1@cam.ac.uk)

Received on Thursday, 23 March 1995 10:12:11 UTC