Thanks Kim and Mark for the feedback. I should have explained at the beginning that I had been looking at DCDate and trying to simplify it. I think I have now decided that it needs to be more complicated, doh !
Cheers, Robin. Robin Taylor Main Library University of Edinburgh Tel. 0131 6513808 > -----Original Message----- > From: Kim Shepherd [mailto:kim.sheph...@gmail.com] > Sent: 30 June 2010 22:07 > To: dspace-tech@lists.sourceforge.net > Cc: TAYLOR Robin; mw...@iupui.edu > Subject: Re: [Dspace-tech] Meatadata dates stored as UTC > > Robin wrote: > > I was looking at a series of photos of Mt St Helens prior > to its eruption. It struck me that the date and time recorded > were part of a context. It was crucial to know that it was > 2.00pm on 29th June 1999 at Mt St Helens in the US. If the > date and time are converted to another local time they lose > their meaning, unless you are bright enough and have enough > information to convert the time back to what it would have been. > > Oh... good point. In this particular case, it would have been > better to store the time with a proper timezone designator so > that there was enough information to restore the date to the > creator's local time, but we're still lacking the information > that says "this date ought to be viewed in the creator's > local time, or the local time of the region in which the > event occurred". > > (also, in the case of photos, I know that JPEG exif metadata > doesn't store timezone designators without some extra work, > so often you'll get dates that are still in original local > time, but have no timezone > offsets) > > I see Mark put it better than me anyway: > > On 1 July 2010 02:34, Mark H. Wood <mw...@iupui.edu> wrote: > > The problem is that sometimes the most useful time zone is > that of the > > context of the object, and sometimes it is that of the user. The > > software *cannot* know which is correct; only the user > knows. Thus, > > no matter what zone we use, sometimes conversion will be wanted. > > Depending on how rich/accurate the metadata you get from > depositors is, and how fancy you want to make the interface, > there may still be ways to allow this user-level context > selection. Any "View this date in X timezone" features in UIs > would still require something like an encoding scheme for > metadata values so that dates could be properly detected. > > -k. > -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first _______________________________________________ DSpace-tech mailing list DSpace-tech@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-tech
