[LEAPSECS] Common Calendar Time (CCT) - timescale design -Brooks Harris

Brooks Harris brooks at edlmax.com
Sun Jan 19 20:31:29 EST 2014


On 2014-01-19 03:53 PM, Zefram wrote:

>

> Your definitions are generally poor. There is much that you omit or

> make horrendously unclear.


There really aren't any definitions yet. Its an informal email. I'd
hoped I could make a little progress without completing the entire
document. Maybe not.


> There's a definite skill to writing usable

> technical specifications, and you don't have it. In the light of this,

> it would be unwise for you to tackle your stated primary objective of

> new definitions to supplant TAI and UTC. It is conceivable that you

> could develop this skill in time, but not a short time.

That's not fair.

I've got one international standard under my belt as primary author that
retains whole swaths unchanged from my strawman proposal.
I've contributed significant sections and modifications to standards
text for over 15 years.

I've got a 30-odd page document draft of this proposal on my desktop.
I've got an exploratory c/c++ implementation of it running which does
what's intended and which interacts with POSIX, Windows and SNTP in ways
I expect.

Both the implementation and any formal description of it are
particularly hard problems given the long and tortured history, the
myriad of objectives, and entrenched attitudes.

I appreciate your constructive input.

Thanks.

-Brooks



>

> As for other parts of CCT, you're mixing together too many things under

> the CCT banner. Timezones are a separate concern from time scales

> such as UTC. The calendar is another completely separate concern; none

> of the time scales here is especially tied to the Gregorian calendar.

> (UTC has a Gregorian-based rule for when leap seconds are permitted,

> and significant epochs tend to be on Gregorian year boundaries, but

> generally describing days by MJDN works perfectly well.) Even looking

> just at your two time scales, they're logically fairly distinct concerns,

> and the definitions have suffered from you tackling both together.

> You are treating in the same way things that have relevant differences,

> not giving each the individual attention that it needs. To produce

> better results you need to tackle narrower subproblems.

>

> -zefram

> _______________________________________________

> LEAPSECS mailing list

> LEAPSECS at leapsecond.com

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs

>

>




More information about the LEAPSECS mailing list