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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Time zone names on mail outside North America
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.000258.2392@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Dec12.211026.8029@dg-rtp.dg.com> <1990Dec13.173731.531@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Dec13.184756.16409@Think.COM>
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 90 00:02:58 GMT

In article <1990Dec13.184756.16409@Think.COM> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>>All, repeat all, repeat all, times and dates in mail headers should be in
>>GMT.  The user interface should translate...
>
>One argument I've heard against this is that it is useful for the Date
>field to be presented in the sender's time zone.  That way it is easy to
>tell that the reason the sender was confused is because he sent the message
>late at night when he was likely too tired to think clearly.

This is useful, however, only if you know the sender well enough to assess
his probable sleep cycle.  I can think of a good many people, for example
me, whose postings at 0200 are just fine but whose postings at 0900, if
any, should be taken with a large sack of salt.

However, I'll concede that including the numeric timezone is not a bad
idea.  (I'd still weakly favor that being an extra item of information
on top of a GMT date, but that's not supported by existing format, alas.)
"GMT" is the only non-numeric zone that should ever appear, though.
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry