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lau,
Actually there are to many things to factor into this to be able to blame microsoft for it all. It is just that every time when something goes wrong everyone is quick to blame it on microsoft and not think of the problem any further. If the board software cant display the date correct because people are using different operating systems, in different time zones, ect., then that is a problem with the software that should be changed to accommodate this. Saying everyone should use a certain OS inorder for there website to display correct is just backwards. If I was going to make a website that only displayed on one browser and didn't work with others, it would be dumb to tell people it was a problem with there browser.
BTW, I am not a fan of MS, but everyone is to quick to blame all there problems on them.

Last edited by roadracer on 08 Mar 2009, 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Instead of people correctly stating they don't have a clue of what Microsoft products may be or how to work with same, they immediately just denigrate the platform. I suppose they live in such rarified circles that sort of attitude is considered proper and they are being polite, but in the real world it just looks like they are only good in what they do and don't have a clue about other OS and are just putting down what they don't know.

Merle

It's all way too complicated for this little green lizard to follow. I'm just gonna kluge around it in the Edit Profile > Forums Timezone until the time displays correctly, and not worry about it further.

P.S. I'm using an iMac. :apple:

I'm "lucky" enough to be in the US and not to have my time settings adversely affected. But I don't think whether you are on a Mac or not makes much difference- I'm running GNU/Linux from my MacBook here and it seems to be handling the time change just fine.

This should be a fairly minor change to WP. For some reason, phpBB2 didn't accept the full range of possible time differences. phpBB3 does so. However, this is not done by identifying the time zone, but merely by storing the offset time in the profile, which unfortunately loses its connection to DST rules.


Here is one of the underlying problems with Microsoft's OSes. They all like to have their hardware clocks set to local time. A simple approach, that works, provided you don't much care about time. Getting the time in UTC immediately involves a conversion from local time, with DST making this ambiguous, one a year, for an hour.


What is the relevance of where the data might be stored?


Relevance?


And here is where you completely gloss over the problem. MS does not supply such a basic thing as this.
For a start, you skip over the whole question of determining whether the user (client - remote) might be on DST. In phpBB3, this is handled tolerably by the user themselves saying so. By having that as a toggle option, it reduces their involvement to a simple click, twice a year.
In a system that recognises time zone information correctly and comprehensively, the BB system could easily handle this itself. To lift the example from the GNU command line utility "date", we can do:
(Which I just typed in on my command line.)
I.e. direct conversion from a time specified in one time zone to a completely different time zone.
The library routines are there. The comprehensive time zone database is there and is maintained. All standard stuff. Part of the OS.


You miss the point again. It is not the fault of the BBS software, if the underlying OS can't handle time zone data. Writing code and maintaining databases of time zone information is NOT the business of every program that runs on a system. They should not be maintaining such data, each in it's own buggy way. It is a obvious function of an OS, to maintain this (and to do all this without bugs, one hopes).


As I say, it is not the business of individual programs to re-invent, re-implement and re-maintain the wheel. But of course, within the proprietary paradigm, that is exactly what happens (or rather, doesn't). Why build something into the OS if you can sell it as a feature to every application program?

In conclusion, I refer you to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone# ... ft_Windows
Note the final: "By default, this feature is disabled."
Feature?

they need to use the tz/olsen database PHP 5 has it.

putenv('TZ=Europe/London');

or

$tz = new DateTimeZone("Europe/Prague");

WordPress maintains GMT as its base with no adjustment for DST. The user has to manually adjust it him or herself. I am in the Eastern time zone (-5 EST or -4 EDT)

The relevance is that you claim MS has problems storing time data and in this case the data is not stored by an MS product. I'll drop it since you think it's irrelevant.



This was part of #1. Having the BBS present the list of timezones and allow the user to choose a proper one rather than using bogus timezones solves this problem. Windows allows querying of timezone information via Win32. It seems that your complaint has shifted from "It's Microsoft's fault the BBS time is broken" to "Microsoft makes it too hard so we shouldn't expect the BBS to get it right."



date is an application. Not an API provided by the OS.



As it is in Windows.



One man's feature is another's bloat.




You also seem to have skipped over this part from the article:


Thanks for proving my point.

No, t0. I gave a perfectly good reference, from which you trucated a quote. The full text is:

My example using "date" was just an example - although there is no reason not to directly employ "date" from an application. You can, of course, look at the source code of "date" to see how it uses the GNU libraries to do all the hard graft.

As 0_equals_true pointed out, the tz/olsen stuff (not MS) is available and can be used on MS - via PHP5 (not MS), or maybe via the 3rd party .NET API I found (not MS). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo

If you would like to show me how the code in the Windows 2003 Terminal Server allows time zone data to be used, please go ahead.

Your quote refers to the Windows shell. The clock will display the same time and date (and time zone) for all users logged onto the server. This is irrelevant to the BBS application software. The BBS application software can calculate time in various zones and print out the results similar to your date application.

I understand that you think the Windows approach to storing time on the system is inferior to the methods used by other OS. I understand how it is useful for 2 users to log onto the same machine and have time represented to them differently by the shell. However, it is irrelevant to the problems in the BBS. You're using this new argument as a distraction from my original point. The point being that you blame Microsoft for incorrect results provided by the non-Microsoft BBS application software.



Starting with Win2k, any application can call GetSystemTime() to retrieve the current time in UTC and SystemTimeToTzSpecificLocalTime() to convert UTC to local time of a specified time zone. You do have to go into the registry to pull out a list of timezones and their relevant data - which I agree seems like more work than it should be. But the information is there and accessible to the application.

So, as SystemTimeToTzSpecificLocalTime is part of Kern32, I guess your earlier comment about "bloat" was directed at MS's operating systems?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_s ... ft_Windows

The more you mention, the worse it gets to look, for MS's attempt to handle time zones. As Vista seems to already be getting it wrong, will Windows 7 be getting it right?

I think you could call any feature not used by 98% of apps bloat - regardless of the OS. APIs to represent UTC in multiple local times may fall into that category.

As for the rest of your post - it's just more irrelevant information. I'm aware of the limitation of the API when it comes to date conversions that cross multiple years with different rules. I'm aware that different versions of Windows have different limitations when it comes to storing historical timezone rules. None of it has anything to do with why the BBS isn't showing correct times.

I feel that I've given you ample opportunity to back up your original statement that Microsoft is to blame for the incorrect times in the BBS and that you've used these opportunities to deflect the issue with criticisms of Microsoft on other barely-related topics. Feel free to continue. I find it no longer worth the time to read these responses any further.

So, in summary, as t0 has prompted me to find out the details....

phpBB software runs on MS OSes.
It makes no sense for the phpBB software itself to implement time zone handling.
MS do not supply any library that correctly handles time zones.
There is a perfectly good public domain time zone handling system: tz/olsen.
Most OSes (but not MS) use this.
It is available via PHP5 and, to an extent, via an independent .NET library.
phpBB2 (which forms the basis of WP) is not really supported any more.
phpBB3 uses PHP5, and will probably eventually start to use tz/olsen via that.
Currently, WP is set up to work fairly transparently for USA based members.

mine to and im in the uk

It is available in countless other things but it not relevant here.

You can do in php4 either use server/system/shell which is not too practical/viable for obvious reasons, or this library:

http://www.psyon.org/projects/tzphp/index.php

MySQL is also system dependent so if you are using their timestamps on insert/update/etc, rather than your own, then it will use the what the system supports.

However they offer an alternative is the operating system doesn't use zoneinfo:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/timezones.html

In a way it makes sense to do your own, then you can make sure it get synchronised and updated as you wish. I mean some countries ares still sorting out thier daylight savings.

I disagree about this. If the display of time were a critical part of your application, then you should make sure it works. Even then, any sensible person would look to finding an existing package that did what they required. Only if such a package was not available (or required a ridiculous fee for using a proprietary form of it) would one even contemplate writing one's own code. One must also budget for the ongoing support that code would need, forever after.

In the case of the phpBB software, none of this applies. Displaying the times is purely cosmetic. The phpBB code should contain virtually nothing in support of the date display. It should just work round the problem (which is what phpBB3 does tolerably well, but phpBB2 was somewhat lax about) and/or access external code to perform the needed work (which it hopefully will eventually do).


This is not a correct description of the state of affairs. There is no ongoing "sorting out" happening. The rules just get changed. The ones that applied in the past still apply to those dates and times in the past. What my parents did at 10pm on a summer evening when Britain last had double summer time in force (think about having conceived me, I'd guess, but at exactly what time, I can't be sure) was still done at 10pm (local time) on that day. The fact that Britain does not have double summer time periods any more, doesn't change that event.

One day, hopefully, the entire world might come to its senses, and abolish daylight saving time completely. That would help get rid of the problems.

But, countries even change their time zone.

At least tz/olsen seems to handle most of this, in a fairly robust way. Plus it attempts to be "future proof", in that it provides for new time zones, etc. And... most importantly... it is public domain, and NOT maintained by me!