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Re: Three inconsistently defined dates in Atom


On 06/02/2004, at 7:48 AM, Bob Wyman wrote:
Graham Parks wrote: 
One last thing:
"The content of an atom:modified element MUST have a time
zone whose value SHOULD be "UTC"." - What purpose does the
very last part serve?

	It is strongly preferred that dates be expressed using UTC
(almost identical to GMT) rather than expressing them relative to
local time. In this way, dates and times are identified in an location
independent manner. (Barring various anomolies that are the results of
the laws of relativity...)

*nods* But what practical purpose does the SHOULD serve?

Because UTC dates are not not an absolute requirement, a conforming client MUST be able to handle non-UTC dates, presumably by converting them to local time when the feed is parsed. And if conforming clients must be able to handle non-UTC dates anyway, there's not much purpose in recommending them over local timezones.

IMHO, either require (MUST) UTC, or don't require it.

C

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