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Re: [O] Time-zone in dates
From: |
Nick Dokos |
Subject: |
Re: [O] Time-zone in dates |
Date: |
Wed, 01 Jul 2015 11:17:17 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux) |
Eric S Fraga <address@hidden> writes:
> On Tuesday, 30 Jun 2015 at 11:08, Nick Dokos wrote:
>> Eric S Fraga <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> On Monday, 29 Jun 2015 at 21:17, Nick Dokos wrote:
>>>> The only reliable way of doing that is to use UTC as the "internal"
>>>> representation and translate to/from local time on external
>>>> display/input *only*. In the case of org mode, the "internal"
>>>> representation is user-visible, so that can cause confusion and some
>>>> head-scratching. But *any* other method is going to be a nightmare
>>>> (damhikt).
>>>
>>> This may be the correct approach although I worry about losing
>>> information by only storing UTC. Whether this information loss is
>>> important or not is difficult to predict. It may be of ephemeral
>>> importance only.
>>
>> In what way are you losing information?
>
> Sorry, should have been clear: the time zone information itself. By
> reducing to UTC, you lose one bit of information. Whether that matters
> or not in practice is not clear but I'm always uncomfortable when
> considering data representations that lead to information loss.
>
> I've been trying to come up with an example that would illustrate the
> problem but I've failed so far.
>
> Funnily enough, the one example I can think of that would be difficult
> to manage with UTC is the case of not wanting to specify a time
> zone. Somewhat contrived but, for instance, wanting to do something
> every morning such as brushing my teeth. This would be, say, at 7am
> regardless of which time zone I'm in. If this were stored in UTC, it
> would be at a different time depending on where I was at the time.
>
This is actually a pretty good example. This and Michael Brand's examples
make it clear that storing (just) UTC in the file is untenable.
Nick
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Eric S Fraga, 2015/07/01
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Michael Brand, 2015/07/01
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Eric S Fraga, 2015/07/01
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Russell Adams, 2015/07/07
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Don Armstrong, 2015/07/08
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Russell Adams, 2015/07/08
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Eric S Fraga, 2015/07/08
- Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Titus von der Malsburg, 2015/07/08
Re: [O] Time-zone in dates, Don Armstrong, 2015/07/07
Re: [O] Time-zone in dates,
Nick Dokos <=