On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 01:29:05AM -0700, Brian Dessent wrote: > Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > I think it would be helpful if the manual said something like this. Even > > coreutils.info just says (in a fairly buried place) "Normally, `date' > > operates in the time zone indicated by `TZ', or the system default if > > `TZ' is not set", without giving any indication of exactly how $TZ > > indicates. I found this unhelpful and frustrating. > The coreutils info page can't just say "run tzconfig" because that only > applies to glibc systems, whereas coreutils is used on many other > platforms as well -- and they all have different ways of setting the > system time zone. Welcome to portable software, where documenting > anything system-specific in a generic way is difficult if not > impossible, unless you want to resort to a long list of "On Linux, do > this; On Solaris, do this; On IRIX, do this; On HP-UX, do this; On > Darwin, do this; On FreeBSD, do this; On Windows, do this." How is the casual reader to know that this is system dependent? How about something like this: The precise meaning of @env{TZ} depends on the operating system, and should be described by the system's lower level documentation. Typically, it includes a mechanism for summer time. > Brian -- Alan Mackenzie (Ittersbach, Germany). _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils