Time Libraries Rough Draft

[Seth Kurtzberg]

Simon Marlow wrote:

>On 11 February 2005 01:54, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:
>
>  
>
>>We are getting bogged down in the terminology here.  My problem is
>>that, as proposed, the library will give wrong answers.  Having a
>>nanosecond granularity library that can't even manage one second
>>accuracy doesn't seem useful to me.  Apparently, though, I'm in the
>>minority here, so I'll let it go.    
>>
>>The comment about scheduling is not correct, because the leap year
>>correction is always available.  To me, it is more important to get
>>the correct answer when, say, finding the amount of time that has
>>passed from one timestamp to another.  I can't see the logic in a
>>library that returns incorrect answers, because to return correct
>>answers is more difficult.     
>>
>>I guess those people who intend to use it don't care if the interval
>>results are correct.  I do care, but I'll have to implement it myself
>>since I appear to be a minority of one.  
>>    
>>
>
>I don't see why you claim the library will produce incorrect answers.
>It will produce answers exactly as correct as the OS interfaces on which
>it is based.
>
>If you want to do accurate interval calculations then you have to use
>TAI, and if you need to convert between TAI and UTC then you also need
>appropriate leap second tables to hand.  The library allows you to do
>this, and the documentation for the library will explain exactly why you
>have to use TAI if you need to do this.  So what's the problem?
>  
>
The problem is that it has been stated several times on this thread that 
there will be no leap second table, nor a way to use one.  If that's not 
correct, then there is no problem.

>Cheers,
>	Simon
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>  
>

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