(1) minutes east/west and (2) aust time
I've been watching the discussion on minuteswest vs minuteseast, and there's a point that I haven't seen brought up yet. The math is a bit less confusing if you use minuteseast. I modified date(1) to allow setting the timezone to any number of minutes west of GMT you want. It was a bit confusing typing "date -z 2:15" and having date print out something like "Fri Feb 20 20:00:00 GMT-2:15 1987". (Notice the sign change!) Turns out that if you take the time in GMT and add minutesEAST, you get the correct time for your zone. west GMT east wall clock time 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 minuteswest/60 2 1 0 -1 -2 minuteseast/60 -2 -1 0 1 2 Other than the pain of converting existing software, it appears that minuteseast is a better choice. ----------------- Also, does anyone know the correct timezone names for Australia? The following is from 4.3 timezone.c: -10*60, "EST", "EST", /* Aust: Eastern */ -10*60+30, "CST", "CST", /* Aust: Central */ -8*60, "WST", 0, /* Aust: Western */ It seems a bit odd to be that there is no indication of daylight time (e.g. EDT, CDT) except for the western zone, which gives "GMT+8:00" during their summer. I find it hard to believe that the Australians refer to their timezone as "GMT+8:00". Snoopy tektronix!doghouse.gwd!snoopy snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 87 14:21:42 PST From: Snoopy <caip!lll-lcc!cae780!doghouse.GWD.TEK.COM!snoopy> Message-ID: <8702202221.AA02350@doghouse.GWD.TEK> The math is a bit less confusing if you use minuteseast. I don't follow that at all, It seems to me to be entirely a tossup, there's no inherent advantage either way. There is probably historical reasons why Ken/Dennis chose one way, and ISO the other, but it still has to be one of those choices. (Sure, you add inutes east to convert GMT to local, but you add minutes west to convert local to gmt...) Also, does anyone know the correct timezone names for Australia? The following is from 4.3 timezone.c: Its correct. (Of course, I'm biased, I put it there...) It seems a bit odd to be that there is no indication of daylight time (e.g. EDT, CDT) The Australian timezone names are "Eastern Standard Time" and "Eastern Summer Time" (etc). It happens that they both abbreviate to EST (which I doubt is a coincidence). 99% of the population don't care whether its summer time or not, 9am is when they have to arrive at work (that is 0900 EST, summer & winter...). I find it hard to believe that the Australians refer to their timezone as "GMT+8:00". Of course we don't. But there's no DST in Western Australia so the issue doesn't arise. Its always standard time (WST). kre
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Robert Elz -
Snoopy