[Zope3-dev] Re: Formatting of Created/Modified times

[Steve Alexander]

>>I think the idea is that the server's clock is set to UTC, but the 
>>server is configured to know that it is in a particular timezone, and 
>>thus has a local time that it is appropriate for applications to present 
>>to users.
> 
> 
> Nah. My approach is that the servers are _always_ set to UTC, and UTC
> alone. If you want to deliver timestamps with a timezone, ask the user
> what timezone they're in, and have the application show the localised
> time. The timezone of the server is almost entirely irrelevant - why 
> should your users care if it's in a colocation facility in, say, Chicago?

I completely agree for the case of colocated servers, and servers that 
are used by a number of people remotely.

I think that when Zope is run on a workstation and used from that 
machine, it should use sensible defaults from that machine.

I'm not suggesting we make a special case for local connections to a 
machine. Rather, I'm suggesting that, in the absense of user settings 
and zconfig settings, the local timezone settings are a better guess for 
presentation than "always UTC".

When my aunt in Australia downloads Zope 3 and goes through the "adding 
folders and douments" tutorial, I don't want her to be confused when she 
adds a new folder at 12 noon, and its modified time appears to be 2am.

Making casual developers need to say what timezone they are in, when 
they have already configured their computer that way, is nonsense.

My opinion on this would change if browsers had a way of telling a 
server what the user's prefered timezone is.

--
Steve Alexander