[Bug 3021] [XSLT 2.0] Timezone names in format-time()

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=3021

           Summary: [XSLT 2.0] Timezone names in format-time()
           Product: XPath / XQuery / XSLT
           Version: Candidate Recommendation
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows XP
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: XSLT 2.0
        AssignedTo: mike@saxonica.com
        ReportedBy: mike@saxonica.com
         QAContact: public-qt-comments@w3.org


In the spec of format-time(), the picture "[ZN]" indicates use of a timezone
name such as PST. Presumably the country code and language code can be used to
decide among the many different names for a given timezone offset (see
http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/). However, this
doesn't solve the problem of summer time (daylight savings time). Given
language "en" and country "US", a timezone of -07:00 can mean MST or PDT. One
could resolve it, at least for dates in the past, using a perpetual calendar of
dates on which the clocks moved forwards or backwards, but that doesn't seem a
reasonable burden on implementations.

I would suggest that in the absence of a more coherent approach to our handling
of timezones as distinct from time offsets, we remove this feature. I don't
think it's implementable in an interoperable way.

Received on Monday, 20 March 2006 15:47:10 UTC