Flame: Problem with zoo: restoring times

[Peter da Silva]

In article <1989Feb20.183931.13918 at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>, woods at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Greg Woods) writes:
> Let me say that another way:  store file times in zoo archives as GMT.

I understood it the first time.

> This will mean that zoo will be 100% compatible with Unix.  For those
> machines that do not keep time interally as GMT, zoo can be compiled
> locally with a given time conversion constant such that it can adjust
> GMT times in archives to match local time.

Zoo, in general, cannot be 'compiled locally'. The vast majority of Zoo
users don't have compilers and don't *care* what time zone they're in.
They just know they downloaded it from a BBS and it does a better job
than ARC.

People in the past have written programs that expected a TZ variable on non-
UNIX systems. People just never bothered to set it.

There are two useful alternatives: (1) Store local time and GMT, or (2) Store
local time and timezone. These alternatives are equivalent, and the second
takes less space. QED.

Just because there was a bug in the implementation doesn't mean the design
decision was wrong.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva  `-_-'  Hackercorp.
...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter at sugar.uu.net      'U`