[MOBY-dev] Versioning of LSID's + vote on RFC 1913 & 1914

[Martin Senger]

> A question for Martin - does the "milliseconds since epoch" number tell us  
> which time zone the milliseconds were measured in?
>
   No, it does not.
 
> If not, then the discussion is somewhat moot...
>
   As I said at the beginning, any of these two ways needs to know which
time zone is used. The string has advantage that you do not need to parse
it (if you want to find its meaning - see further comment on it below),
the formatted date has advantage that you see at once - without looking
into a separate documentation - what time zone it was created in (because
it should always use the 'Z' separator).

> value, then maybe we gain something, maybe not (but we shouldn't be coding  
> as if it did either way, since we're not supposed to interpret LSID fields)
>
   I think that we do not need to be that rigid. If we document what our
LSIDs contain, we can still interpret it. LSIDs are here for us, not vice
versa :-). The LSID spec says: "The users of the LSIDs are permitted to
use individual components (as specified elsewhere in this document) of
LSIDs - although the LSID component parts themselves should be treated as
opaque pieces of the identifier." So we are permitted to use version,
eventhough we are not supposed to interpret it - but as I said rigidness
is not an issue here.

   Cheers,
   Martin

-- 
Martin Senger
   email: martin.senger at gmail.com
   skype: martinsenger
consulting for:
   International Rice Research Institute
   Biometrics and Bioinformatics Unit
   DAPO BOX 7777, Metro Manila
   Philippines, phone: +63-2-580-5600 (ext.2324)