[Coco] NitrOS-9/OS-9 feature suggestion

[Richard E. Crislip]

On Sun, 09 Aug 2015 10:41:25 -0600
William Astle <lost at l-w.ca> wrote:

> Doing timezones correctly is *hard*. Not only do you have changing 
> offsets from UTC, but you have all the random rules for handling DST
> or not depending on the location. And the best part is that the
> specific handling of time zones also depends on the specific time
> being handled since the definitions change over time.
> 
> There is a crazy amount of data related to timezones that is kept by 
> Linux and other systems. Linux has no idea where it is located. The
> time zone is set by simply selecting a time zone which selects a
> specific data file to be used for identifying all the rules for
> figuring out the local time.
> 
> On 2015-08-09 09:35, John Guin wrote:
> > I fought with time zones while I was on the Exchange and Outlook
> > teams with Microsoft for more than 10 years.
> >
> > The last I saw, there were somewhere around 157 time zones that
> > Exchange/OL supported.  They constantly change (Venezuela was a
> > great example - they decided mid week to change their time zone
> > during the next weekend) and North Korea just announced they were
> > changing their time zone this week.  I doubt OS-9 is used much in
> > either country, though.  It still leads to an interesting
> > political/legal view on which time zones you want to support.
> >
> > Katmandu also has a 15 minute offset.
> >
> > Sounds like a fun, challenging project that would make the
> > implementor(s) think about the world more than the code/feature
> > being implemented.
> >
> > If you want a different perspective, read the last chapters of this
> > book:
> > http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Code-Programmers-Transcendent-Software/dp/1400082471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439134365&sr=8-1&keywords=dreaming+in+code
> > Essentially, time zones are what killed that project.
> >
> > Good feature request!
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of
> > George Ramsower Sent: Saturday, August 8, 2015 11:45 PM
> > To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> > Subject: Re: [Coco] NitrOS-9/OS-9 feature suggestion
> >
> > On 8/9/2015 12:33 AM, K. Pruitt wrote:
> >> So New Zealand is +12:45 minutes off of GMT.
> >>
> >> Couldn't be off on the hour, or even the half hour. Had to be off
> >> on the three quarters of the hour mark.
> >>
> >> Way to make things difficult, New Zealand.
> >>
> >> How does Linux store basic time zone info and also does Linux now
> >> store location info (lat and long coordinates)?
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "K. Pruitt"
> >> Sent: Saturday, August 08, 2015 9:43 PM
> >> Subject: [Coco] NitrOS-9/OS-9 feature suggestion
> >>
> >>
> >>> I think a flag somewhere in the system would be useful to indicate
> >>> the CoCo's time-zone.
> >>>
> >>> This could be very useful for a lot of time-based utilities.
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps the offset from GMT along with the status of DST stored
> >>> in a file in the SYS directory?
> >>>
> >>> It would have to be a standard to be truly useful.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >    I was looking into this very subject a few days ago. There are
> > several locations of odd time zones. Do a Google for "world time
> > zones" and you will find many with odd time offsets.
> >
> > George R.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Coco mailing list
> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> >
> 
> 

This is a issue that was thoroughly chewed on by YAM team (Yet Another
Mailer) for the Amiga. I don't know how or if it was resolved.