Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!usc!cs.utexas.edu!rice!cathyf
From: cathyf@rice.edu (Catherine A. Foulston)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Is anyone interested in putting local time in the "Date:" header?
Summary: Can rn be made to show local time?
Message-ID: <3324@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 89 14:49:47 GMT
References: <580@logicon.arpa> <14752@well.UUCP> <581@logicon.arpa>
Reply-To: cathyf@rice.edu (Catherine A. Foulston)
Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
Lines: 32

In article <581@logicon.arpa> Makey@LOGICON.ARPA (Jeff Makey) writes:
>I looked, and section 2.1.2 of RFC 1036 says:
>    [...]  It is recommended that times in message headers be
>    transmitted in GMT and displayed in the local time zone.

>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

I agree with this completely.  I have sometimes wanted to know
_how long ago_ an article was posted, but rarely what the local
time was.  And for transmission it seems best to adhere to a
well-defined standard.

Since I keep forgetting how many hours to add/subtract for GMT, and
most of our users shouldn't have to know, the easiest way to deal
with this would be to display all times in the reader's local time.

Does anyone know a simple way to make rn do this?  I've been asked to
do this anyway, since we have local newsgroups which carry system
announcements, coursework due date changes, and so forth.  GMT is
really inappropriate for these groups.

I was hoping there was a compile-time option for this in rn, but if
there is, I missed it.  So if I don't hear of any patches for this,
I'll probably try to fix it myself over winter break.  I'll post
patches if I get it done.

Cathy Foulston  =||=  cathyf@rice.edu  =||=  {well-connected}!rice!cathyf