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From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Time zone names on mail outside North America
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.004807.10995@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 00:48:07 GMT
References: <1990Dec13.173731.531@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Dec13.180844.15200@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1990Dec14.000511.2507@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 26

In article <1990Dec14.000511.2507@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <1990Dec13.180844.15200@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>>All, repeat all, repeat all, times and dates in mail headers should be in
>>>GMT.  The user interface should translate ...
>>
>> Well, that's a little strong.  The vast majority of email stays within a
>>single time zone, most within a single organization in that timezone, and
>>a whole lot stays on a single machine.  When you get our politicians to
>>change to GMT for everything we can consider your radical approach.  Until
>>then most users don't want to do some arithmetic just to see when a message
>>was sent or when it arrived.
>
>Please read what I wrote, especially the second sentence.  The design of
>a storage/transmission format and the design of a user interface are two
>entirely different problems with different solutions.

 I read what you said, including the second sentence.  There are many user
interfaces that are useful for reading mail.  I count 'cat', and 'more'
amongst them.  And I don't think too many people will approve of 'fixing'
these to convert dates.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115.                                  +1-815-753-6940