Re: Last Call: Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps to Proposed Standard

[pregen at egenconsulting.com]

John, where is the original of this note?  Did it go to the calendar list? If it's on another list, can you point me to it so I (and the list) can see the text of the whole note.  Thanks.

"John Stracke" <jstracke at incentivesystems.com> Sent by: owner-ietf-calendar at mail.imc.org 11/09/01 18:10

To:        ietf at ietf.org         cc:        iesg at ietf.org, impp at iastate.edu, ietf-calendar at imc.org         Subject:        Re: Last Call: Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps to Proposed Standard

Keith Moore wrote:

>However, many events are actually specified relative to a particular 
>timezone, and timezone offsets occasionally change with little advance
>warning.  As such, this representation may not be sufficient for 
>specifying dates and times of some kinds of events, particularly
>future events.

This is correct.  The IMPP group covered this in Minneapolis, I think. The 
draft alludes to the problem, but may not be explicit enough (probably 
isn't, if Keith felt it necessary to comment):

   o  All times expressed have a stated relationship (offset) to
      Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  (This is distinct from some
      usage in scheduling applications where a local time and location
      may be known, but the actual relationship to UTC may be dependent
      on the unknown or unknowable actions of politicians or
      administrators.  The UTC time corresponding to 17:00 on 23rd March
      2005 in New York may depend on administrative decisions about
      daylight savings time.  This specification steers well clear of
      such considerations.)

I believe that Keith is right, that this paragraph should include a 
reference to iCalendar (RFC-2445) and point readers to that for use when a 
simple timestamp won't do.  It's a small point, but it could prevent some 
confusion.

/========================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer     |
|jstracke at incentivesystems.com   |Incentive Systems, Inc.|
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own.|
|========================================================|
|"Time is money, and price is information." --Russ Nelson|
\========================================================/