Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!logicon.arpa!Makey
From: Makey@LOGICON.ARPA (Jeff Makey)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Is anyone interested in putting local time in the "Date:" header?
Summary: No.
Message-ID: <581@logicon.arpa>
Date: 29 Nov 89 02:23:43 GMT
References: <580@logicon.arpa> <14752@well.UUCP>
Organization: Logicon, Inc., San Diego, CA
Lines: 31

In article <14752@well.UUCP> Jef Poskanzer <jef@well.sf.ca.us> writes:
>In the referenced message, Makey@LOGICON.ARPA (Jeff Makey) wrote:
>}I'll bet that the RFC requires GMT, anyway.
>
>Does it?  And if it does, does it matter?

I looked, and section 2.1.2 of RFC 1036 says:

    There is no hope of having a complete list of timezones.  Universal
    Time (GMT), the North American timezones (PST, PDT, MST, MDT, CST,
    CDT, EST, EDT) and the +/-hhmm offset specifed in RFC-822 should be
    supported.  It is recommended that times in message headers be
    transmitted in GMT and displayed in the local time zone.

I suggest you read the rest of the section yourself before you unleash
your patches.  The answer is no, the RFC doesn't *require* the date to
be in GMT.  But even if it did, we all know that it only causes
problems when everybody follows a standard so it's best to invent your
own way of doing things [is there a smiley-like symbol to indicate
sarcasm?].

Still, I couldn't care less what the sender's local time was when the
article was posted.  I would much rather have the date displayed in
*my* local time by my newsreader, and putting anything but GMT in
the Date: header line is guaranteed to make that job more difficult.

                           :: Jeff Makey

Department of Tautological Pleonasms and Superfluous Redundancies Department
    Disclaimer: Logicon doesn't even know we're running news.
    Internet: Makey@LOGICON.ARPA    UUCP: {nosc,ucsd}!logicon.arpa!Makey