RE: Time

Pedro.

I prefer that time zone be part of a person's locale.  You store times in
databases and exchange time values between systems in UTC but when you
actually display the time it is better to use the person's local time.

I notice that you have some time zone information.  Unfortunately it is a
bit simplified.

I find that the 3 or 4 letter abbreviations are not very usable.  You site
shows AKST for Alaska standard time.  Many times people use AST which is the
same as Atlantic standard time.  Moscow Summer Time is also often MST which
is the same as Mountain standard time.  You also can not tell if MST
pertains to Denver which has daylight savings or Phoenix which does not.
How about Riyadh Solar Time which is GMT+03:07:04?  Or how about Lord Howe
time which in GMT+10:30 but has a half hour daylight savings time
adjustment.  How many DST routines will even handle Southern Hemisphere time
zones?

If you want to get technical Kiritimati for example is GMT+14:00 not
GMT-10:00.  If you want to really get nasty I don't know of any time routine
that deals with historical dates.  For example last year Sidney changed the
DST dates because of the Olympics.  So last years dates should use a
different set of dates to calculate DST.

Most systems update the tables so that they work for current dates.  That
way they work for special time zones.  No one wants to figure out DST values
for dates like the ones where the DST start stop dates are based on the
Jewish calendar.

If you want to know if a person is an expert on calendars just ask them to
explain why February 24th is the extra day that is added to make a leap year
one day longer.

Carl

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org
> [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Pedro M.
> Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 9:46 AM
> To: www-international@w3.org
> Subject: Time
>
>
> I suggest use Universal Time Coordinate like Default Time for the
> web ( you
> can see an example at the bottom of  http://sitio.de/energia )
>
> For example, imagine you see in a page that there will be meeting in a
> certain place, irc server, TV program at a determinated hour (
> for example,
> 15:00 UTC , with this  three letters after the numbers ).
>
> You see the UTC clock and now itīs 12:00 UTC and in your local clock itīs
> 10:00 .
>
> You know now that the event will happen at 13:00 local time (
> this is, 15:00
> UTC ).
>
> All the best.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Thierry Sourbier" <webmaster@i18ngurus.com>
> To: "Lacoursiere, Guy" <Guy.Lacoursiere@Cognos.COM>;
> <www-international@w3.org>
> Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 5:47 PM
> Subject: Re: Extended Characters in Server Names
>
>
> > Guy,
> >
> > It is now possible to register domain names in nearly every
> language. The
> > standard for communication is to use UTF-8 as a common encoding for URIs
> > (thus avoiding the all characters encodings mess :).
> >
> > If the registration is possible and the standards defined, I do not know
> if
> > international domain names are currently supported by all the DNS and
> > servers.
> >
> > A couple of URLs (in US-ASCII :) worth checking out:
> > http://www.i-d-n.net/
> > http://ml.register.com/
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Thierry Sourbier
> > www.i18ngurus.com
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Lacoursiere, Guy" <Guy.Lacoursiere@Cognos.COM>
> > To: <www-international@w3.org>
> > Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 4:24 PM
> > Subject: Extended Characters in Server Names
> >
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'd like to know whether it is possible in Europe and Asia to create
> > server
> > > names in their own character set (using extended 8-bit or multibyte
> > > characters) or do server names always have to be in US-ASCII
> characters
> > > only?
> > >
> > > Do all operating systems allow the use of extended characters
> in server
> > > names?  Even if they do, are people actually doing that?  If different
> > > servers on a network have names in different character sets,
> how does it
> > > work?
> > >
> > > I'd appreciate any input on this.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Guy Lacoursiere
> > > Cognos Incorporated
> > >
> > >
> >
>

Received on Friday, 10 August 2001 17:22:59 UTC