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Clueless UTC / GMT

Could clueless show true UTC times? (As a per user preferences option, either that or both UTC and local clock-on-the-wall time.)

Would it be a nightmare to implement or is it just a matter of replacing calls to some routine everywhere with a call to new routine, and then also adding the code to handle a user-preference setting?

CecilWard, 30.03.2018, 10:56
Idea status: under consideration

Comments

Iain, 07.12.2018, 19:07
should always be UTC, never any form of DST or other time zone..

there are a couple of reasons:
1. http has no way to communicate timezone (last I looked at this a year or so back)
2. DST and timezone are largely political decisions and politians are irrational....

but think it through... your 'uk' webserver lives in AWS on the west coast of the US... you're on holiday in Austrailia with the TZ on your laptop set to UK. How should the webpage display the date/time? BST, PST, AEDT

before you say geolocate based on the IP address, that doesn't work. Never mind any GDPR and privacy concerns... VPN's and proxies can easily make you 'appear' to be somewhere else. I regularly get google in German/French when the company proxy fails over.

You likely can't even just use GMT/BST as there's nothing to stop someone living on the other side of the world buying a London VOIP number off A&A.

Timezone stuff is *hard*, partly down to technical deficiencies in current http, largely down to the politians. Recent history shows year round BST 1968-1971 and stuff like https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/daylightsaving.html and https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/uk-bst-2010.html 'Single Double Summer Time'.. Really? Even the name is utter nonesense.

So yes, make it a user preference on clueless that lets you pick whatever TZ you like.
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CecilWard, 21.01.2019, 01:07
What Iain said
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