RSS Dates (was Re: [Syndication] Re: RSS-files)

[kellan]

On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Johannes Wilm wrote:

> Well why isn't it in GMT?

The answer is two-fold.
1.  I don't want to lose the local timezone info, I consider it useful and
interesting.  I suppose I could be talked out of it, with the argument
that its implied by the IMC that is publishing the feed.  However that
does not make the information machine accessible.

2.  Give that I don't want to lose the local timezone info, using the date
format from the spec that specifices the time locally, and the time zone
seemed to make the most sense.

> Isn't this the kind of stuff (worldwide webpage syndication) that the
> GMT is actually usefull for.

Yeah, in theory.  My take was that IMC is a phenomena really focused on
the local.  It also doesn't add much complication to the work.  For
example, to sort, you simply convert to the seconds since the epoch which
is always in GMT.

> How else are you going to keep everything
> on order? what do you do in the first 8 hours on the first day of any
> month? If you calculate the time back to GMT you will have to know
> whether the last month had 30, 31, 28 or 29 days. Isn't that just
> making the matter a whole lot more comlicated?

It doesn't seem all that complicated to me, but I guess I've been doing
calendars so long, it kind of comes naturally.  check out mxDateTime in
python, or Date::Calc in Perl.

http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Date-Calc

> By the way I got my scripts working with the content-definition of
> RSS1.0 and it can render b, i, srong, em and makes some basic a-href
> (it puts small * with numers across the text and concludes the entire
> text with a list of all hyperlinks). I would now need to get the spec
> for pictures, so if anybody has it, just bring it on out...

Very cool.

kellan

>
>  -- Johannes
>
> On Thursday 04 April 2002 00:30, kellan wrote:
> > Sorry, but its the local time, plus the timezone offset.
> >
> > so 2002-03-15T08:47:16-0800 could also be written:
> >
> > 2002-03-15T16:47:16Z where Z indicates the time is in GMT
> >
> > more info is here:
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
> >
> > kellan
> >
> > On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, Johannes Wilm wrote:
> > > Hi again,
> > > I saw the RSS-filecontains a dc:date-string.like 2002-03-15T08:47:16-0800
> > > Now I would like to now whether that means that the article has been
> > > written in a timezone 8 hours away from GMT and that the given time is
> > > GMT, or whether it means that the given time is the local time 8 hours
> > > away from GMT at the time of publishing.
> > > I really hope the time is GMT, so I can just throw the
> > > localtime-information away and so I don't have to calculate that back to
> > > GMT. Could someone comment on this?
> > >  -- Johannes
> > >
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