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Re: fundamental facets - inquiry from the XML SchemaWorking Gr

• To: Liam Quin <liam@w...>
• Subject: Re: fundamental facets - inquiry from the XML SchemaWorking Group
• From: John Cowan <cowan@m...>
• Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 03:48:50 -0400
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <20031011025640.GG17857@w...>
• References: <830178CE7378FC40BC6F1DDADCFDD1D1D51621@R...> <1065803799.748.55.camel@delleric> <1065834968.3944.23.camel@z...> <20031011025640.GG17857@w...>
• User-agent: Mutt/1.3.28i

Liam Quin scripsit:

> Even the length of a day is not in fact entirely constant,
> because of leap seconds, and because of daylight savings time.
> (I would like to make a withdrawal from my savings, please!)

Leap seconds do affect the length of the day, but daylight saving
changes don't.  It's true that certain *calendar* days have 23 or
25 hours in them, but "a day" means either 24 hours or on rare
occasions 24 hours and 1 second.

> One approach to arithmetic is to convert durations to a
> number of seconds, and dates to a nuber of seconds past some
> epoch, an offset from UTC, and a local timezone name.  

I think a sensible approach to the duration value space is to
ignore leap seconds (as is conventional) and to construe
a duration as an ordered pair <months, seconds>.

-- 
Knowledge studies others / Wisdom is self-known;      John Cowan
Muscle masters brothers / Self-mastery is bone;       jcowan@r...
Content need never borrow / Ambition wanders blind;   www.ccil.org/~cowan
Vitality cleaves to the marrow / Leaving death behind.    --Tao 33 (Bynner)

• References:
  • RE: fundamental facets - inquiry from the XML SchemaWorking Group
    • From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>
  • RE: fundamental facets - inquiry from the XMLSchemaWorking Group
    • From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>
  • RE: fundamental facets - inquiry from the XMLSchemaWorking Group
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
  • Re: fundamental facets - inquiry from the XML SchemaWorking Group
    • From: Liam Quin <liam@w...>

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