Xref: utzoo comp.text:2344 comp.std.internat:400
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From: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: All numeric representation of dates
Keywords: date time si cut gmt
Message-ID: <1802@water.waterloo.edu>
Date: 30 Aug 88 13:37:50 GMT
References: <187@dcs.UUCP> <3264@edm.UUCP>
Reply-To: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 46

I seem to have stimulated some discussion by mentioning my preference
for the representation of dates as "yyyy mm dd".  I have more.

Someone argues that significant things should come first and then says that
days or months are more significant.  To him I would say that as one ages,
ones perspective changes (smile).  But I digress.  Let me get to the point.

I find lines of the type

	From site!user  Tue Aug 30 07:52:53 EDT 1988

(which appear on mail messages on my machine) to be slightly
irritating.  Every time I think about them I get the idea that
the programmer/designer included the year as an afterthought.

I am glad to see that some news posting programs now give date/time
with a "GMT" attached, and I wish that more mailers did this.  I
correspond with people in different time zones, and sometimes find
it painful to figure out what time it was when the message was written.
I think I would like a line in news and mail files that gives the
date and time in a standardized ( = agreed upon ) format.

I suppose we will continue to have lines like the above, and/or
like

	Date: 31 Aug 88 20:03:03 EST
   (or	Date: 31 Aug 88 11:03:03 PM EDT    	:-)	)

which seem to abound today, but I would like to see a line like

	SI-Date: 1988 09 01  03:03:03 GMT

presented in SI or ISO format, for some agreed upon time zone
(how about GMT, or Coordinated Universal Time).   

There is no a-priori reason why such a line has to be seen by a reader.
(You might have the option now to suppress certain lines in the file.)
But a glossy piece of software would process such a line and tell 
me what time it was here (and/or what time it was there) when my
correspondent sent the message.  

-- 
    L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.
	ljdickey@WATDCS.UWaterloo.ca	ljdickey@water.BITNET
	ljdickey@water.UUCP		..!uunet!watmath!water!ljdickey
	ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu