[squeak-dev] UTCDateAndTime discussion + Q&A

Chris Muller ma.chris.m at gmail.com
Mon Oct 22 21:30:52 UTC 2018


Hi Dave,

Thanks for making UTCDateAndTime available on SqueakMap that "just
works" -- not having to go research how to properly install it left me
some time to actually start looking at it today.

A cursory look reveals that, at least functionally, everything appears
to be essentially the same as original Chronology except the on-going
million-dollar question:

             What are the point-in-time endpoints of a timespan
identified by a particular "Date"?
             There are two reasonable answers to this question:

                 1) "local" e.g., a period that begins from 12am to
11:59:59.999999 of my LOCAL time,
             or 2) "global" e.g., a period that begins from 12am to
11:59:59.999999 of UTC (offset 0).

We already know that original Chronlology supports ability for
applications to represent their Dates either way.  What about
UTCDateAndTime?   When I do:

        DateAndTime now asDate = Date today

I get "true", even though MY 22-Oct-2018 begins and ends at a
different point-in-time than those in the UTC timezone..

I realize most applications want a canonical representation of Dates,
but where does this leave the timespan use-cases?  Are they even
possible at all?   What if I truly need the same local representation
of  22-Oct-2018 that everyone else recognizes in my local area?

Thanks,
  Chris


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