<<On Tue, 31 Dec 1996 15:18:33 -0800, Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com> said:
When the local offset is unknown, the offset "-00:00" MAY be used to indicate that the time is in UTC and the local offset is unknown.
This is worded a little confusingly -- could you please clarify? Is it common to have situations where UTC is known but local time isn't? Without more motivation, it's hard to see why this suggestion is needed.
Certainly. If you're running NTP, for example, you know a fairly good approximation of UTC, but the local offset is still left to be manually configured. Or consider, for example, a large corporate host with users from many different parts of the world; while each user may have his own idea of the timezone, system administrators may choose to use UTC for system programs to ease administration. Programs which communicate with such a system should not assume that communications related to a particular user is dated with that user's preferential timezone. -GAWollman -- Garrett A. Wollman | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same wollman@lcs.mit.edu | O Siem / The fires of freedom Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame MIT, LCS, ANA, or NSA| - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick