[tz] [PATCH 2/3] Replace some zones with links when that doesn't lose non-LMT info.

Steve Allen sla at ucolick.org
Thu Sep 5 04:43:51 UTC 2013


On Wed 2013-09-04T19:09:52 -0700, Paul Eggert hath writ:
> Steve Allen wrote:
> > Unlike UTC, the concept of UT can be validly extended into the
> > indefinite past.
>
> Thanks for bringing this up.  Here's a proposed patch that
> tries to fix the occurrences of this problem that I found in
> the tz code and data.  I've pushed this to the experimental
> repository.

These patches make my POSIX conformance side very uncomfortable.
The comments about the data are generally more accurate by using UT.
The comments in and about the POSIX API get very confusing for not
using UTC (as is done in the POSIX docs themselves), and I think they
might best be left referring to UTC.

Unfortunately there is no single good answer for the name of the
Greenwich-like time scale that is presumed by computer APIs.  In the
absence of switching the zdump output string between UT and UTC as of
1960 some sort of apologetic explanation may be required.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
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