On Fri, 19 Jan 2018, Robert Elz wrote:
"Standard" time is simply the time that is agreed it is *now* (at any time of the year) - that's what it means to be a standard.
That's essentially why I think tm_isdst should be based on something other than the notion of one time offset being standard and another being a variant on that. The laws establishing time offsets have the function of determining the offset applicable for legal purposes at any given time, not the function of determining tm_isdst. Just because the law happens to be worded as "the offset is X, except at these times when it's Y", or to give a name involving "standard time" to one choice of offset, should not be considered of semantic significance; the law had to choose some part of the year to be X and some part to be Y, or if naming the offsets had to come up with different names for them, but the particular choice of which is X and which is Y is just an arbitrary choice in drafting the law. -- Joseph S. Myers jsm@polyomino.org.uk