ietf-nntp UTC (was: Minor corrections to 11.4)

[Charles Lindsey]

In <20000901095457.F39226 at demon.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

>    The use of the term GMT in this document means a time which is
>    intended to be within 5 seconds of UT1 or UTC.

I don't think you want to get bogged down in accuracies of 5 seconds.
Surely the whole point of the GMT/UTC is to establish the timezone (if you
don't say that, then it defaults to whatever the server uses - i.e. there
is no ascertainable default, so GMT is the only safe option).

The text should make it clear that it is there for the purpose of
establishing timezone and nothing else. It is not our job to tell
operating systems how accurate their time must be kept.

>in the introductory text, then in 11.1 change "UTC (or GMT)" to "GMT". In
>11.4 and 11.5 make all the obvious changes to eliminate the term UTC, and
>then add:

Clerly GMT MUST be supported for backward compatibility. UTC is only there
for "political correctness". Be politically correct if you want, but as an
Englishman I am quite happy to commemorate the memory of Greenwich (in
spite of what they did to Harrison :-) ).

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Email:     chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9     Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7  65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5