RFC: Time Library 0.2

[Axel Simon]

On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 10:30 +0000, Simon Marlow wrote:
> > These can all be done easily if you use UTCTime for epoch time.
> > 
> 
> [ good examples snipped ]
> 
> This discussion raises a good point, I think: the library is carefully
> designed, but perhaps lacks something in accessibility.  Many of the
> questions that John raised occurred to me when I browsed the docs, in
> general it isn't obvious how to do the easy things.  You demonstrated
> that the easy things are in fact easy to do, so it's just a problem of
> presentation.
> 
> That can be addressed in two ways: 
> 
>   - change names to be more friendly.  If UTCTime is going to 
>     be the "linear" time scale that everyone uses to do simple
>     calculations, then we should call it something like ClockTime
>     or Epoch (better suggestions welcome), noting in the documentation
>     that it is UTC.  It should be the first thing that you find when
>     you browse the docs, too.

I think UTCTime is the right name as it conveys exactly what it is. I
suggest to keep it and to mention in the docs that this is the time type
one normally uses. Introducing a new, less meaningful name is the wrong
direction, IMHO.

Axel.