On Wed, Aug 24, 2016, at 12:23, Steve Allen wrote:
On Wed 2016-08-24T09:56:09 -0400, Tim Parenti hath writ:
I understand the partial motivation behind getting rid of the need to specify UTC±N, UT±N, and GMT±N, which do have differences, but I agree with the general sentiment expressed here that this negatively affects the readability of our commentary.
I agree about the readability, but I'm not sure what is best. Furthermore, in some countries some of those different notations are legally correct and others are not. Some multi-lingual countries use different terms in the versions of their law written in the different languages.
I'm not sure how important it is for the comments to be "legally correct", other than when directly quoting the laws. And ±N doesn't seem to me to be *more* "legally correct", it's just less readable to no clear purpose.
Preprint 662 at the 2011 Future of UTC colloquium http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/futureofutc/2011/preprints/index.html and preprint 505 at the 2013 Future of UTC colloquium http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/futureofutc/preprints/index.html have a survey of the legal language in many countries and analysis of the legislative processes which have resulted in the different use of UT, UTC, GMT.
Are there any countries whose law still prescribes the time zone as a meridian (that may be a multiple of 15, but arguably still can't be "legally correctly" described as GMT±N since it gives the difference in degrees rather than hours), e.g. "the mean solar time of the sixtieth degree of longitude west from Greenwich"? The US law doesn't currently, but I can't find when it changed.