[DAS] Re: das/2 proposal status

[Andrew Dalke]

Sicotte, Hugues (NIH/NCI) wrote:
> Furthermore if we use XML date types we can now
> take time zones into account which is useful now
> that we are doing worldwide computing.

The spec was using RFC 2068 dates.  I suggested using
a clarification of RFC 1123, to require 4 digit dates.
That RFC is a clarification of RFC 822.

RFC 822 is for email, which is almost be definition a
form of worldwide computing.  It has allowed timezones
for the last 22 years

      zone        =  "UT"  / "GMT"                ; Universal Time
                                                  ; North American : UT
                  /  "EST" / "EDT"                ;  Eastern:  - 5/ - 4
                  /  "CST" / "CDT"                ;  Central:  - 6/ - 5
                  /  "MST" / "MDT"                ;  Mountain: - 7/ - 6
                  /  "PST" / "PDT"                ;  Pacific:  - 8/ - 7
                  /  1ALPHA                       ; Military: Z = UT;
                                                  ;  A:-1; (J not used)
                                                  ;  M:-12; N:+1; Y:+12
                  / ( ("+" / "-") 4DIGIT )        ; Local differential
                                                  ;  hours+min. (HHMM)

RFC 2822 does change this to obsolete the military
and North American qualifications, so that the preferred
use is the ( ("+" / "-") 4DIGIT ) local differential.

> e.g. 1999-05-31T13:20:00-05:00
> would represent and Eastern Standard Time, which is 5 hours behind
> UTC (Universal Time Coordinate)
> as per iso 8601 for time which is mostly followed by the w3c xml schema
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/

Under the normal RFC dates that's written, with timezone, as
   Mon, 03 May 1999 13:20:00 -0500


BTW, it appears that the proper spec for RFC-style
dates is now RFC 2822.

					Andrew
					dalke at dalkescientific.com