Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!world!geoff
From: geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: warning to all sinners in regard to current C News patches
Message-ID: <1991Mar24.194437.7713@world.std.com>
Date: 24 Mar 91 19:44:37 GMT
References: <1991Mar24.035259.20738@zoo.toronto.edu> <9ICP05C@methan.chemie.fu-berlin.de>
Organization: Software Tool & Die Netnews Research Center
Lines: 29

Henry Spencer:
>>The contents of the Date header must be a legal, unambiguous date and
>>must not deviate too far from the format recommended in RFC1036; in
>>particular, obscenities like "11/12/91" are outlawed.

Heiko Schlichting:
>What about the European timezones "MET", "MEZ", "MESZ"... ?
>It is not nice to forget Europe (and most of the other timezones outside
>USA) in the RFC and I hope Cnews is still more international.

No need for paranoia :-); we haven't forgotten Europe (and it's not nice
to forget the rest of the Western Hemisphere, the same timezones that
apply to the US also apply to Canada, Mexico and South America :-) :-) or
the rest of the world.  We have a large table of world-wide timezones in
our date parsers.  (There are a few minor errors in the current table, but
that is to be expected in timezone tables, alas.)

However, non-numeric timezone names are a botch:  they are ambiguous and
people seem to just invent new abbreviations at will (Q: how many
timezones claim the name "CST"? "EST"?).  The less said about the mess in
the USSR and daylight savings time in general, the better.  Timezones in
Date:  headers should either be "GMT" (*strongly* preferred) or numeric
(+hhmm or -hhmm [e.g. -0500, +0100]), per RFCs 1036 (netnews) and 1123
(hosts requirements, which updates 822 [mail format], which is cited by
1036).  US military timezones are right out.  (While you are at it, make
sure the year in any date is given as four digits, per RFC 1123; 2000 is
only nine years away.)
-- 
Geoff Collyer		world.std.com!geoff, uunet.uu.net!geoff