Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU!kre From: kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh Subject: Re: FAQ Message-ID: Date: 27 Apr 91 00:01:58 GMT References: <27913.670882599@castor> <1991Apr5.235625.3788@ns.uoregon.edu> <2764@sapwdf.UUCP> Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au Lines: 28 wohler@sapwdf.UUCP (Bill Wohler) writes: > my feelings were that they are coming out with better, less > ambigous timezone names such as PDT8PST and MET-1DST These things aren't timezone names, they're timezone specifications, ie: they're uses on Sys V type systems in the TZ environment variable to tell the ctime() type library functions what timezone your system is in. > or modify the sources to use better timezone names? You can't do that - rfc822 is very explicit on which timezones are legal in mail headers. There's actually nothing at all ambiguous about a legal rfc822 date header, with or without an ascii timezone name. The problem is that rfc822 is very (VERY) US-centric in this, the rest of the world was just forgotten. If you're not in the US, you MUST use numeric zone specifications (except if you're GMT). As a general principle, it would probably be better if everyone just switched to use the numeric zone names for transmission (its just fine for mail readers to display the zone as a name, using whatever local conventions make sense). kre