Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: CNews - now a pedantic software! : -(
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 91 23:30:35 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Apr13.233035.8779@looking.on.ca>
References: <3313@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <5077@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <1991Apr09.160444.25262@looking.on.ca> <1991Apr9.185748.11721@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991Apr9.221012.19572@visix.com> <9104122026.57@rmkhome.UUCP>

Actually, in retrospect, the best plan is probably to use a floating point
number for the date.   In spite of the fact that I see no problem with
a low resolution figure like minutes, some people seem keen on fine resolution
for this number which is used only to sort articles by posting time, measure
when to expire or reject them, and give the user a rough idea of the time of
posting.   For the first, minutes is good enough.  For the latter, hours
would do.

However, perhaps a floating point number of days is the most logical date
interchange format.   This is clean, although FP minutes has the advantage
that people who want to just use integer math and don't care about seconds
have an easy out.  Just about all news software would be fine with long integer
minutes, and those who really want accurate time could use the fractional part
if they desired.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
