Time library comment

[Eric Etheridge]

I have read all of the comments on this list over the
last half a year regarding the Time library, and I
feel I need to comment.  (That was a lot of reading!)

I write games, and I use Haskell.  I don't need a time
library to do anything fancy at all, no timezones, no
leap seconds, nothing.  I only need two things from a
Time library:

1. An absolute assurance that some method of
determining current time will give me an actual
resolution of at most 1-3 milliseconds, without regard
for leap seconds or even the user changing the system
clock.

2. A way to set an event (OS signal, IO () function,
whatever) to happen a certain amount of time in the
future, again without regard to leap seconds or gross
alteration of the system clock.

#1 is very critical to games, because it is desirable
to coordinate the display function with the rate of
the screen refresh, which can be 85 Hz or higher on
high-end machines.  Hopefully, you redraw once and
only once for each screen refresh.

Currently, #2 means writing my own alarm thread and
depending on poll and the like, as others have pointed
out.  Why can't that be a standard function?

All of the other functions such as conversion and the
like are frivolous for game design, because everything
is measured relatively from game start, since the
system clock as-is can't be trusted.

Don't take this too seriously.  Just know that the
current method of achieving that kind of resolution
requires using GLUT, which means eating up more memory
and CPU than necessary.

As always, thanks for a wonderful language, libraries,
and compilers.

- Eric Etheridge

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