Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!metro!usage.csd.unsw.oz.au!ccadfa!Christopher-Vance@adfa.oz.au
From: Christopher-Vance@adfa.oz.au
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: Timezone interpretation problem
Message-ID: <1837@ccadfa.adfa.oz.au>
Date: 20 Aug 90 23:34:17 GMT
References: <123900@pyramid.pyramid.com> <9008201520.AA24431@somewhere>
Sender: cjsv@ccadfa.adfa.oz.au
Organization: Computer Science, University of New South Wales, ADFA, Canberra, AUSTRALIA
Lines: 39

aks@HUB.UCSB.EDU (Alan Stebbens) writes:

| Well, Ben, that's really drastic -- removing, or changing the defaults
| to suit, albeit in a more general fashion, the constraints of using MH
| in Australia.

Or anywhere else outside USA/Canada.  And there are a lot of us.

| Oh yeah: you'll probably have to add some disambiguating code to convert
| incoming dates from timezone names into timezone numbers, depending upon
| the country of origin.  It really isn't that hard to do, though.
| Perhaps, a motivated Aussie can come up with suitable patches??

I get lots of mail from places which claim to use EST, but they mean
+1000, not -0500.  And I also get mail from other places which claim to
be EST, but they mean -0500, not +1000.  Now how do I disambiguate that?

You want *me* to check the top-level domain of *your* machine so I know
if you mean my EST or yours.  Why don't *you* change *your* mail to tell me
unambiguously?  After all, your machine knows better than mine what your
real zone is.  Or you could use UTC.  Or stop calling your timezone EST (yes
I know where UCSB is -- I mean `your' as in USA/Canada).

When you get mail from me saying my zone is EST, what are you going to
do with my date?  Leave it alone?  Correct the zone?  Misunderstand it by
15 hours?  Install my code?  Ignore the timezone anyway?

If you don't care very must about getting the timezone right, why not
put in a configuration option to omit the time zone altogether.  And
maybe I'll install *your* code :-). 

Perhaps everybody in the world can add a new TZ record type in their
domain name server entries to indicate where in the world they are :-). 

No, it's time for an end to parochialism; let MH be defaulted to follow
a reasonably useful unambiguous standard, and anyone who wants a
backward-compatible, ambiguous kludge can alter his own configuration. 

-- Christopher