Proposal for new ISO C 9x time API

[Nathan Myers]

Ken Pizzini <ken at halcyon.com>
>Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca at renault.fr> wrote:
>> > Surely we
>> > could think of some other, perhaps even more suitable, name
>> > for this?  Some ideas:
>> >   ...
>> >   struct chronos
>> >   struct tiempo
>> >   struct heure
>...
>> > (From this list, I somewhat favor "chronos".)

Of course the greek might better be transcribed as "xronos".  But
we've already been there. :-)

>> 
>> However, it may not fit well with the rest of the API,
>> which is clearly English-biased.
>
>Well, IMO that is largely a historical accident; ... And the Greek word
>chronos (Kronos) is used in English as the combinitive form "chrono-"
>in several words; provincial English speakers should have no problem
>understanding the time-related meaning of "chronos".

I favor simply "chron_".  It is the basis for "chronometer", is
unlikely to be used already in user programs, and is shorter. 

>> OTOH, struct time is available, too.
>
>Yes, but we still need a name to substitute for the xxx of strfxxx(),
>and "time" _is_ taken there.

As discussed, hacking and analogy for the name "strfxxx" is a bad idea.

With the above suggestion and the prior work we have "chron_format".
But name discussions are rarely fruitful, once the important criteria 
are exposed; I'm sure Markus is now well-equipped to make sound 
decisions about names.  

Can we discuss the rest of the proposal?
The URL was:  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/c-time/

I wonder if it needs a bit more interface for the timezone_t opaque
type, such as a way to find out when the next or previous "summer time"
transition happens/happened, if any.

Nathan Myers
ncm at cantrip.org