- From: TAMURA, Kent <tkent@chromium.org>
- Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:52:15 +0900
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: whatwg <whatwg@whatwg.org>
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote: > > However, I'm not sure how this can be presented to the user. In the > > example above I suggested that time input UI should be accompanied with > > local time zone ("Europe/Helsinki" in my example). However, that would > > suggest that this info would be transferred to the server and that the > > server is expected to follow political time zone changes to that > > timezone. The user could be assuming that he has defined a specific time > > in a specific timezone (an absolute time as far has he knows). > > > > In the reality, the server would like to transfer *the responsibility* > > for the possible future time zone changes to the user -- the server > > expects user to come by and modify the absolute time in case the user > > local timezone has been modified since entering this absolute time. I > > have absolutely no idea how on earth this could be explained to casual > > user. And even if it could be explained, I'm pretty sure the end user > > wouldn't be happy with that responsibility. > Yeah. Indeed. > > The next best choice would be to have datetime-with-timezone but > > unfortunately > > > > (1) Official database for all timezones does not exist > > (2) Official timezone names (or labels) do not exist > > (3) Timezones are subject to future political decisions > > > > The problems (1) and (2) make transferring the timezone information from > > the end user to the server very problematic and the problem (3) makes > > any work to fix (1) and (2) a bit pointless. This is because even if UA > > could successfully inform the server about the correct timezone, the > > server could be using a week old timezone data that is not up to the > > latest political events. Or the server might be using latest timezone > > data but the UA could be using three year old data. In either case, the > > absolute time in UTC could be different for the server and UA. > Indeed. So, I think it's impossible for us to build reasonable UI for type=datetime. It should be removed from the specification. -- TAMURA Kent Software Engineer, Google
Received on Sunday, 13 January 2013 13:53:03 UTC