Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.bugs
Subject: Re: Flame: Problem with zoo: restoring times
Message-ID: <5746@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 16 Feb 89 19:58:51 GMT
References: <2880@mhres.mh.nl> <5698@bsu-cs.UUCP> <2884@mhres.mh.nl>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 20

In article <2884@mhres.mh.nl> jv@mhres.mh.nl (Johan Vromans) burns me
to a crip with flames:
>Did you ever notice that the world does not stop at Greenwich?
>In other words: how about timezones that are EAST of GMT?

The intent was to have all timezones represented as seconds west of
GMT, up to a maximum of 24*60*60 seconds.  So if you are 1 hour east of
GMT, you are also 23 hours west of GMT.  If there is a bug related to
this, it probably involves a missing 1-day adjustment for sites east of
GMT and west of the International Date Line.

>File times [should be] stored internally relative to GMT.  When stored
>this way, they should be retrieved this way. No need to change it.

The main problem with doing this is that not all operating systems
maintain information about where they are relative to GMT.  Most users
don't even *know* how far they are from GMT.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
                    ARPA:  bsu-cs!dhesi@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu