change-log-time-zone-rule

[Stefan Monnier]

The variable change-log-time-zone-rule was added in:

   revision 1.84
   date: 1996-08-24 21:10:47 +0000;  author: erik;  state: Exp;  lines: +40 -12
   Change to ISO 8601 date formats, without time of day.
   (change-log-font-lock-keywords): Adjust accordingly.
   (add-change-log-entry): Compare and insert with new date format.
   (change-log-mode): Make `paragraph-start' and `paragraph-separate' use \<
   like `page-delimiter' for consistency.
   (change-log-time-zone-rule): New variable.
   (iso8601-time-zone): New function.
   (add-change-log-entry): If change-log-time-zone-rule is non-nil, calculate
   date according to that rule, and indicate resulting time zone.

It allows to choose which timezone to use (in place of the local time zone)
for ChangeLog entries.  Now, for a reason that escapes me, this also has the
side effect of adding a "+HH" (or "-HH") indicating the hour-offset of the
selected timezone w.r.t utc-time.  This will be a constant string (modulo
daylight savings time and political decisions) so it seems useless at best.
Also it is not recognized by font-lock patterns, which indicates that it's
probably not used much if at all.  This behavior is also not mentioned in
the docstring.

I'd be tempted to consider it as a bug, if it weren't for the fact that the
author of the code went to the trouble to write iso8601-time-zone (now
called add-log-iso8601-time-zone) specifically for this (mis)feature.

Does anyone know/remember why it was decided that change-log-time-zone-rule
should also add a " +HH" additionally to changing the timezone in use?

Any objection to removing this annoying behavior from
change-log-time-zone-rule (maybe re-introducing it with another orthogonal
configuration variable like change-log-iso8601-with-tz)?


        Stefan