Re: [boost] Date/Time formal review

From: William E. Kempf (williamkempf_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-04-16 13:06:41

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joachim Achtzehnter" <joachim_at_[hidden]>
To: <boost_at_[hidden]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2002 12:37 PM
Subject: Re: [boost] Date/Time formal review

> William E. Kempf wrote:
> What I find a little strange, by the way, is how gregorian and posix
> modules are so strictly separated. I would have expected the library to
> model date/time as generic concepts and then support different
> representations that can be converted into each other. After all, a given
> time point can be represented (labeled) in many different ways (as a
> time_t, as a Gregorian UTC date/time, a Gregorian date/time local to some
> timezone, as a Julian date, as a MJD, more accurately either of the above
> can be based on UTC, atomic time, or ephemeris time).

This is precisely one of the aspects that I didn't know from the cursory
look I've given the library so far.  I *strongly* feel that the gdtl
namespace "plumbing" *must* provide a mechanism for universal
representation.  Every time system then is free to provide it's own
representation, but must support translation to and from the universal
representation.  Templated functions would then allow conversion from any
time system representation to any other time system representation through
this universal representation.  With out this, there's little point in
having configurable systems.  If GDTL doesn't provide this with this
submission my vote would have to be at best an "accept if..." vote.

Bill Kempf