Dumb question #2: if there's a way to turn tm structures ... does .. [ being able to deduce it ] ... obviate the need for a GMT offset element in the tm structure?
Certainly, this is possible. . .But the zone offset information is trivially available to localtime, it seems like it can't hurt to provide this extra information, essentially for free.
The only place I can think of that it might hurt is if someone has squirreled away tm structures in a disk file. If that's happened, the committee's desire to avoid breaking existing code would argue against changing the tm structure. Now if you change the structure's name, then code will break noisily-- something the committee seems willing to accept. -- UUCP: ..seismo!elsie!ado ARPA: elsie!ado@seismo.ARPA Elsie and Ado are trademarks of Borden, Inc. and Ampex.