
So do you remember how the rest of us (Elz, me, Bob Device, Bradley White,
etc.) got involved?
I don't, but the computer does. (One advantage of working on image processing is big disks and lots of tapes.) There was a fair amount of mod.std.unix posting in early '86, kicked off by Mark Horton's original "How best to handle time conversion?" posting. Bob Devine responded since he'd been responsible for time stuff with an earlier employer; he was person who knew that astrologers had the best information about DST in the past. Robert Elz was motivated by the fact that the Australian government fiddled the DST rules down there for a visit by the Queen in March of '86. He boldly installed the early code just before the visit. Robert's changes to "date" to work with the new functions showed up in mod.sources in June of '86. Robert knew of your work before I did:
From munnari!kre Tue Aug 26 13:10:08 1986 remote from seismo
. . .
To: elsie!ado
. . .
Did Guy Harris (sun!guy) ever send you his mods to this stuff?
He has made the compiled timezone files be in "standard" format
so they can reside on one host on a net, and have others access
them (by NFS or whatever), regardless of whether there's a mixture
of Sun's vaxen, etc, with different byte orders & such.
Clearly the mods had been sent by the time that the "timezone mailing list" was announced in late '86:
From ado Mon Nov 24 19:58:54 1986
. . .
To: tz
Subject: seismo!elsie!tz ; new versions of time zone stuff
Now that we've moved from 4.1BSD to 4.3BSD here at elsie,
I've set things up so that mail sent to
seismo!elsie!tz
will go to folks who've expressed an interest in time zone matters. . .
Currently on the list:
ado@elsie.UUCP
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP
mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM
kre@munnari.OZ
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM
devine@vianet.UUCP
bob@anvil.UUCP
rgt@hpfcdg.UUCP
guy@sun.UUCP
. . .
And now the real news: new versions of the time zone compiler, the
ctime et al. library, and the time zone data are available. Guy Harris
provided the bulk of the ideas and work that went into the new versions,
but should be held innocent of any blame for errors since I've tinkered
with Guy's work (in part to try for more compatibility with System V and
the work of rgt@hpfcdg.UUCP, who's the time zone person at Hewlett-Packard).
. . .
(How it is that I forgot after then how to spell compatibility is beyond me.) The mailing list saw a flurry of activity in December of '86, with an upcoming P1003 meeting due to try to figure out how to standardize time conversion; H-P was preparing an alternative proposal to "P.55," which was based on the table-driven stuff. As part of the flurry, John S. Quarterman (who carried the banner before P1003) got involved at kre's behest:
From seismo!munnari!kre Sun Dec 7 06:57:42 1986
. . .
To: elsie!tz
Cc: jsq@sally.utexas.edu
Subject: timezone proposals for P1003
. . .
I think things are getting way too complicated.
All P1003 needs (and all it should have) is a spec of
the interface that programs should have to time conversions.
. . .
Robert Elz seismo!munnari!kre
ps: I have added a cc to John Quarterman, who I guess is
as close as anyone to being my representative on P1003,
given that I'm a usenix member... John, this is in response
to some discussions over the HP proposals and other replated
issues. elsie!ado can fill you in on what's been going on I think.
There's a mailing list at elsie for tz discussions. Bradley White first appears (at least in my back mail files) in early '87: (presumably after the P1003 meeting?); he was referred by. . .
From seismo!sun!guy Thu Feb 19 06:56:54 1987
...
To: elsie!ado
Subject: Could you send him the latest version when it's ready?
Cc: bww@k.cs.cmu.edu
Status: RO
From: Bradley White <bww@k.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: diffs for ctime.c for new DST rules, v7 systems
To: guy@Sun.COM
Guy,
If you could send me (or point me at) a copy of Arthur Olson's "ctime"
I will have it installed in CMU Mach/Unix. Hopefully this will aid in
its dissemination.
...
--ado
participants (1)
-
Arthur David Olson