🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Dec12.211026.8029@dg-rtp.dg.com> eliot@dg-rtp.dg.com writes:
>... what kind of time zone specification do folks outside
>of North America expect to see on the mail they send?  ...

All, repeat all, repeat all, times and dates in mail headers should be in
GMT.  The user interface should translate if appropriate -- *it* knows
about arbitrarily messy local conventions.
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry

In article <1990Dec13.173731.531@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>All, repeat all, repeat all, times and dates in mail headers should be in
>GMT.  The user interface should translate if appropriate -- *it* knows
>about arbitrarily messy local conventions.

 Well, that's a little strong.  The vast majority of email stays within a
single time zone, most within a single organization in that timezone, and
a whole lot stays on a single machine.  When you get our politicians to
change to GMT for everything we can consider your radical approach.  Until
then most users don't want to do some arithmetic just to see when a message
was sent or when it arrived.

 What is wrong with numeric timezones?

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115.                                  +1-815-753-6940

In article <1990Dec13.173731.531@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>All, repeat all, repeat all, times and dates in mail headers should be in
>GMT.  The user interface should translate if appropriate -- *it* knows
>about arbitrarily messy local conventions.

One argument I've heard against this is that it is useful for the Date
field to be presented in the sender's time zone.  That way it is easy to
tell that the reason the sender was confused is because he sent the message
late at night when he was likely too tired to think clearly.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar

In article <1990Dec13.184756.16409@Think.COM> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>>All, repeat all, repeat all, times and dates in mail headers should be in
>>GMT.  The user interface should translate...
>
>One argument I've heard against this is that it is useful for the Date
>field to be presented in the sender's time zone.  That way it is easy to
>tell that the reason the sender was confused is because he sent the message
>late at night when he was likely too tired to think clearly.

This is useful, however, only if you know the sender well enough to assess
his probable sleep cycle.  I can think of a good many people, for example
me, whose postings at 0200 are just fine but whose postings at 0900, if
any, should be taken with a large sack of salt.

However, I'll concede that including the numeric timezone is not a bad
idea.  (I'd still weakly favor that being an extra item of information
on top of a GMT date, but that's not supported by existing format, alas.)
"GMT" is the only non-numeric zone that should ever appear, though.
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry

In article <1990Dec13.180844.15200@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>All, repeat all, repeat all, times and dates in mail headers should be in
>>GMT.  The user interface should translate ...
>
> Well, that's a little strong.  The vast majority of email stays within a
>single time zone, most within a single organization in that timezone, and
>a whole lot stays on a single machine.  When you get our politicians to
>change to GMT for everything we can consider your radical approach.  Until
>then most users don't want to do some arithmetic just to see when a message
>was sent or when it arrived.

Please read what I wrote, especially the second sentence.  The design of
a storage/transmission format and the design of a user interface are two
entirely different problems with different solutions.
-- 
"The average pointer, statistically,    |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry

In article <1990Dec13.184756.16409@Think.COM> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
 > One argument I've heard against this is that it is useful for the Date
 > field to be presented in the sender's time zone.  That way it is easy to
 > tell that the reason the sender was confused is because he sent the message
 > late at night when he was likely too tired to think clearly.
I second this (please note the time stamp of this message; it is already
quite late overhere).  :-)
--
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
dik@cwi.nl

>Until then most users don't want to do some arithmetic just to see when
>a message was sent or when it arrived.

To quote from the message to which you're responding:

>The user interface should translate if appropriate -- *it* knows
>about arbitrarily messy local conventions.

so Henry was not saying that users should have to "do some arithmetic
just to see when a message was sent or when it arrived".  He was saying
that the *user agent* should do that arithmetic.

Unfortunately, many user agents don't do so, so the question is how
quickly they'd get updated to do so (or how quickly those that don't
would be discarded) if lots of messages started having header times in
GMT.

If it happens quickly enough, no problem; if it doesn't, such that the
effect of going to GMT is that users *do* end up having to do that
arithmetic, the proposal may well not really make life better for the
end user.  (An unfortunately tendency, at times, is to contrast
alternatives A and B under the assumption that some C could exist that
makes one of the alternatives better, when that C doesn't, in fact,
exist yet; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.)