On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Chris Dolan <ch...@chrisdolan.net> wrote: > Yes, just as I said: a constant offset between each of the proposed > epochs.
No, because the offset is not constant. The delta between TAI and UTC is currently 34 seconds. Two months ago it was 33 seconds. The next time there's a leap second it will change again. And we can't reliably predict when that will be. time_t is indeed easiest to implement, but it doesn't have any way of distinguishing 2008-12-31 23:59:60 UTC from 2009-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Better to use a basis that has all the information and then transform the value into the lossier form on demand, I think.
