Re: Time-zone in dates

[Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com>]

On Wed, 01 Jul 2015, Michael Brand wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 8:27 AM, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, 30 Jun 2015 at 11:08, Nick Dokos wrote:
> >> In what way are you losing information?
> >
> > Sorry, should have been clear: the time zone information itself.  By
> > reducing to UTC, you lose one bit of information.  Whether that matters
> > or not in practice is not clear but I'm always uncomfortable when
> > considering data representations that lead to information loss.
> >
> > I've been trying to come up with an example that would illustrate the
> > problem but I've failed so far.
> 
> As an example for the above I suggest to consider a non-stop flight
> with a duration of 1:31:00 from Salt Lake City UT to Phoenix AZ, both
> cities in different time zones, here intentionally even the same basic
> time zone but one with daylight saving and one without.

[...]

> 2) When the Org file format would support time zones I would use
> 
>    * Flight from Salt Lake City UT to Phoenix AZ
>      <2015-07-01 Wed 10:55 MDT>--<2015-07-01 Wed 11:26 MST>
>      - *Advantage*: Visibility of the time zones where the event takes
>        place.

Of course, this is even more complicated, as MST could mean UTC+08,
UTC-07 or UTC+06:30.

That said, lets not make perfect the enemy of the good. I've currently
got emacs running under TZ="America/Los_Angeles" even though my machine
is in TZ="America/Chicago" precisely because org mode can't yet handle
this.

I'd be willing to help out as much as I'm able, too.

-- 
Don Armstrong                      http://www.donarmstrong.com

I have no use for "before and after" pictures.
I can't remember starting, and I'm never done.
 -- a softer world #221
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=221