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2.5.5.7 Global dates and times http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/single-page.html#global-dates-and-times This section gives a number of examples that equate time zone offset with an actual time zone. For example: -- "1979-10-14T12:00:00.001-04:00" One millisecond after noon on October 14th 1979, in the time zone in use on the east coast of the USA during daylight saving time. -- It should be made clear that a zone offset is not the same thing as a time zone. Mention should be made of the need for separate time zone information when working with real date and time values in use cases that depend on it (see our note "Working with Time Zones") Norbert commented: The issue really is: why don't we use IANA time zone names to identify time zones? "-04:00" could be "the time zone in use on the east coast of the USA during daylight saving time", but it could also be one of many other time zones.
The example quoted is accurate -- the time it refers to is indeed on the east coast of the USA, and not another time zone that happens to have the offset -04:00. There's no way to tell that from the time itself, but that's just a limitation of the ISO format. Are there any cases where the terms are confused? I thought I had been careful about the way the terms were used.
How do you know "the time it refers to is indeed on the east coast of the USA" and not in Venezuela?
This bug was cloned to create bug 17857 as part of operation convergence.
Same decision as https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=17857
The I18N Core WG previously resolved that we did not agree with Ian's comments on or closing of 17857 and we don't agree with closing this item without addressing it. Please reconsider this bug.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the Editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the Tracker Issue; or you may create a Tracker Issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Accepted Change Description: Added clarifying note about time zone vs. time zone offset using the text suggested in https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=18646. Change: https://github.com/w3c/html/commit/c7be97aaa6b33436758d1d5290bf7d384488e993 Hi Addison, Could you please review this change and let me know if it sufficiently addresses this bug and that the citation for the WG note is correct? Thanks, Erika
Additionally, these clarifications from the WHATWG spec have been folded in: https://github.com/w3c/html/commit/03987c7c457164d51d7835136acbc6bfe9fe3f3f
Further cherry-picked: https://github.com/w3c/html/commit/1ba94c20bbacc47f8bcd1fef86e75095e561b351 which introduces a reference to the time zone database
The I18N WG is satisfied by this change. Thank you.