On Jul 17, 2016, at 6:03 PM, Peter Coghlan <cctalk
at beyondthepale.ie> wrote:
...
I think that dates/times were done pretty well on VMS with the exception
of a couple of blunders - not going further back than 1858 for the base
date and not having the system manage time in UTC while allowing
individual users to deal with time in whatever timezone they want to be
in.
Not using UTC is indeed unfortunate in a way. Then again, using UTC internally comes with
problems too, because the local time as displayed comes out wrong whenever the politicians
change the rules with insufficient lead time. Some countries know to avoid this; a lot
do not, as those living in Turkey or Egypt have recently discovered.
As for 1858, that's not 0 but it's a lot earlier than 1969. And if you go back
much further, you run into some interesting issues: Julian or Georgian calendar?
Actually, that's an issue even after 1858, but only for a few countries.
paul