Re: Call for comments: HTML5.x time zone proposal [I18N-ACTION-327]

On 08/08/2014 16:50, Phillips, Addison wrote:
> All,
>
> The Internationalization WG has been working on addressing a long-standing gap in HTML time and date values, which is the lack of accurate/complete time zone identifiers. Time values can contain the UTC (GMT) offset, which allows most "timestamps" to be complete. However, some situations call for the additional information conveyed by the actual time zone rules. See [1] for examples.
>
> This item is tracked against HTML.next by [2] [I18N-ISSUE-89]. The working group has developed a proposal in response to this issue. The Internationalization WG would like comments from the community. You can find the proposal here:
>
>     https://www.w3.org/International/wiki/HTML5TimeZone
>
> Please send comments to this list *before* next Thursday, 14 August.
>

[forwarding comments sent to the wrong list]


On 25/07/2014 21:04, Phillips, Addison wrote:
 > For this coming week's teleconference, please review:
 >
 > https://www.w3.org/International/wiki/HTML5TimeZone

"For example, you can have a time value such as
2014-06-19T07:10:16-07:00, which indicates a time that is offset from
UTC by 7 hours (and is approximately the same as the Pacific Daylight
Time in the USA at that time of year)."

Isn't it exactly the same?

Perhaps it would be useful to draw this example out a little, for
example to say that on another date such as 19 Oct, the time with a
-07:00 offset would not be the same time as Pacific Daylight time, since
that would no longer be in force - nor would it relate to Pacific
'non-Daylight' time, whatever that is called.

I think it would be useful for people not so familiar with time theory
to spell out (albeit in just a sentence or two) what is meant by 'time
zone'.


"future dates cannot be correctly represented by an offset alone"

But surely it's also risky to base them on time zones, since if it is,
say, 5 years from now it could be that the rules will have been changed,
eg. discontinuation of daylight savings?


Proposal 1 should state what happens if no tz attribute is used.


ISO8601 -> ISO 8601


Hope that helps,
RI

Received on Wednesday, 13 August 2014 16:55:01 UTC