[Bug 17856] i18n-ISSUE-89: Time zones and local dates and times

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=17856

Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
         Resolution|---                         |WONTFIX

--- Comment #5 from Ian 'Hixie' Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> ---
(In reply to comment #4)
> 
> The use of the therm "floating time" seems compelling to me.

Unfortunately it's often wrong. Most use cases for type=datetime-local are
cases with an explicit or implicit time zone. For example, an airline flight
picker would use type=datetime-local, with the time zone implied by the airport
code.


> It's not even something that has to be defined in the HTML spec, since
> it's defined here

I'm not sure how that would affect this one way or the other.


> It's more concrete than "local date and time", because the determination of
> "local" implies a point of reference.

There often is a point of reference.


> Thus, we'd need to specify whether it's with reference to the local time zone
> of the browser - or the local time zone of the server or [...]

It varies on a case-by-case basis.


> We, in fact, want the opposite: we want something that has no time zone
> and no point of reference. 

That is contrary to the point of this type.


> It depends on when the mapping to a wall-clock time happens. A "local date
> and time" implies that the mapping happens at the time of input/selection in
> the browser.

Right.


> After that, the time zone is fixed.

In most cases, but not necessarily.


> In contrast, a "floating
> time" implies that there is no time zone and it's always mapped at the time
> of display, which is more accurate.

More accurate for some uses, but not all.


> "floating" works for me and was also what you used in #c1 to explain what
> 'local dates and times' means.

I gave two examples in comment 1; the first is a floating time, the second is
not.



I'm marking this WONTFIX since this is also covered by a WHATWG thread that I
just responded to, and I'd rather not discuss this in two locations. If you
have further information to add, please respond on the WHATWG thread. Thanks.

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Received on Monday, 29 July 2013 23:31:49 UTC