Re: RFE: Modification to the Timezone Modifier

[Marko Myllynen]

Hi,

On 2013-10-15 17:33, Marko Myllynen wrote:
> On 2013-09-30 23:18, Eric Blake wrote:
>> On 09/30/2013 07:54 AM, Marko Myllynen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Given that GNU date's "UTC%:::z" produces almost what we're looking for
>>>> full hours ("UTC+03" vs "UTC+3") I'm wondering would it be possible to
>>>> add support for GNU date to express timezone in a way to match the
>>>> aforementioned recommendations?
>>>>
>>>> This might hopefully help in possible future discussions with Austin
>>>> Group which, if leading to positive results, could then in turn used as
>>>> basis for glibc strftime changes which would then, finally, allow
>>>> changing the Finnish locale as described above.
>>
>> It seems like it would be reasonable to add some sort of modifier to the
>> existing %:::z to request suppression of leading 0.  If we didn't have
>> back-compat to worry about, I'd even suggest making %:::z be the short
>> form, and %0:::z be the 0-padded form.
>>
>>> This seems a bit of the chicken and the egg problem to me so I'm not
>>> sure how to proceed here. Of course, if you think this is something that
>>> will not be considered at least today it'd be also helpful to know.
>>
>> Gnulib tries to copy from glibc, but we've diverged in the past and then
>> later fed it back into glibc where such things make sense (ie. fixing
>> gnulib does not necessarily require fixing glibc first).  But first, I'd
>> echo the advice that glibc gave you: open a bug with the Austin Group
>> (http://austingroupbugs.net/login_select_proj_page.php?ref=bug_report_page.php)
>> and point them to the existing GNU date extension of %:::z as something
>> that might be worth standardizing to meet the needs of the Finnish
>> government.
> 
> sorry for the delayed reply and thanks for your insights - I've now
> filed http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=772 so let's see how it goes.

the request has been rejected on the basis that there are no current
implementations.

Based on all the above I'm not sure what to do at this point, should we
just live with this for few years and recheck at some point if the
proposal would be more acceptable then or do you see any viable options
to reach the desired result in the short/medium term?

Thanks,

-- 
Marko Myllynen