Re: RFE: Modification to the Timezone Modifier

[Marko Myllynen]

Hi Eric,

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.

Thanks,

-- 
Marko Myllynen