On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 17:30, Steve Kostecke <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2012-04-05, Dave Hart <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Of course, neither is necessary if your local timezone is UTC to begin >> with. I use UTC on my Windows systems because Windows misrepresents >> historical and future timestamps which are in the other half of the >> year, in DST terms. > > UTC is no panacea. > > Some people are more concerned about having a usable desktop clock > which displays the time in their local time zone than they are about > timestamps.
I agree that my solution is fraught with cost and can imagine others reaching different decisions. I would much prefer if Windows were clever enough to use the UTC offset in effect at the given time when converting between UTC and local -- instead, it always uses the current UTC offset essentially pretending daylight savings doesn't exist. Worse, applications can't work around it without rewriting the bulk of Windows UTC/localtime conversion code, either relying on the undocumented Windows timezone information in the registry, or using the open source Olsen stuff and taking on keeping it up to date. Fortunately, it's pretty easy in practice to use a Windows desktop with UTC as the local timezone. The system tray's clock will display up to two additional timezones when hovered (as a tooltip) or left-clicked (with analog clocks and the current month's calendar). Similarly, Microsoft Outlook's calendar functionality can displaying an alternate timezone alongside the default. My computer's timestamps don't match wall-clock timezone, it's true, but that's rarely an issue for me in practice, and when it is, I can do the conversion better than Windows. Cheers, Dave Hart _______________________________________________ questions mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions
