On Tue, Aug 16, 2005 at 10:24:41AM -0500, Dave Rolsky wrote: : On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Larry Wall wrote: : : >But the best part is that if we abandon UTC leap seconds for civil time, : >we don't have to remember leap seconds going forward, only backward from : >2000. : : So you want to take on the (very irritating, I tell you) burden of leap : seconds going _backwards_ but not going forwards?
Well, sure, but we have no choice about the ones that were already performed. We could certainly take on the burden of tracking leap seconds in the future as well, but my point is we don't know them in advance. The old ones stay put, but the new ones potentially change from year to year. (Though they might not, if we get rid of civil leap seconds.) : But that's in contrast to your saying that the epoch would be December 31, : 1999 at 23:59:29.0 UTC. Or did I misread your earlier messages? Yes, you misread it. I was angling for 00:00:00.0 UTC. But it scarcely matters if UTC keeps screwing around with leap seconds, and civil time stays locked to UTC. I personally think we should add a bunch of leap seconds at the beginning of every year divisible by 100, and leave the rest of the years alone. Larry
