Time Libraries Rough Draft

[Aaron Denney]

On 2005-02-10, Scott Turner <p.turner at computer.org> wrote:
> On 2005 February 10 Thursday 07:19, Simon Marlow wrote:
>> On 10 February 2005 12:12, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
>> > And the simple fact that obtaining TAI from systems in use requires
>> > periodic updates of the leap second table causes other difficulties.
>>
>> This is a vitally important bit of rationale which has emerged from the
>> current discussion.  I certainly didn't fully appreciate the
>> difficulties with basing the library on TAI before,
>
> Another significant bit for me was the realization that TAI is no good for 
> scheduling future events on an everyday calendar. If I schedule a new year's 
> celebration for Jan 1, 2006, that would be represented in TAI as 1514764832.0 
> seconds after the epoch. If a leap second is inserted at the end of 2005, 
> then my celebration at 1514764832.0 TAI will be premature. Even if we go to 
> the trouble of keeping our leap second tables current, this is still a 
> problem.

Yes, because TAI is a clock, not a calendar.

-- 
Aaron Denney
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