On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Robert Elz wrote:
From: Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com> | I always considered "is DST in effect, and if so, what is the | offset from standard time" to be an important question,
Could you perhaps explain why?
Partly because I imagine that at least some of the people who live in the area would care about it (some government officials, even if no ordinary people), and partly because it's exposed in the API. If you call mktime() twice, with tm_isdst=0 and tm_isdst=1, and subtract the results, then you get the DST offset; if both results are equal, then you know that there is no DST for that zone/date/time.
Notions of "standard" time vs summer time are purely ones of perception. For those areas with bi-annual clock jumps, we could just as easily consider the time during summer to be the "standard" time, and that that applies during winter to be "winter adjustment time" applied to allow the sun to rise at an earlier clock time in winter. It is all just a matter of perception, and I don't really think it important at all.
Well, yes, it's just a matter of perception, but I think the database should try to match the perception of the people.
I'm not going to delay this update to wait for this to be perfected however.
That's very sensible. --apb (Alan Barrett)