DALI 1.1 comments

[Rob Seaman]

Hi Paul and all,

If you have concerns about timekeeping formats and protocols, please note that registration remains open for The Science of Time symposium, whose diverse organizers include a few of us here:

	http://sot2016.cfa.harvard.edu

Icebergs there may be, but sometimes penguins, too:

	http://ngjyra.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Antarktiku.jpg

Rob
seaman at lpl.arizona.edu
—

> On May 10, 2016, at 12:42 PM, Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> wrote:
> 
> On Tue 2016-05-10T19:11:09 +0000, Paul Harrison hath writ:
>>> FITS forbids the use of Z, for good reasons.
>> 
>> Then FITS should not even be mentioning ISO-8601 as not having the Z
>> in ISO-8601 means that the date time string should be interpreted as a
>> local time.
> 
> The FITS standard does not mention ISO 8601.
> 
>> I would suggest that to write any times in something like iso-8601
>> format when you want to express a time in a particular timescale
>> (other than UTC) is the act that should be banned, as it is highly
>> likely that your intentions will be misinterpreted
> 
> This ship has sailed, and yes, this is one of the icebergs out there.
> The standards bodies responsible for computer time representations
> explicitly disregarded advice to be able to handle precise time,
> so anyone trying to do that must diregard the standards.
> 
> --
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