Re: A structured format for dates?

[Martin Thomson <[e-mail]>]

It really seems like, given that we are debating this now, that Deprecation can use SF-Date in whatever form we decide.  I know that folks in HTTPAPI leaned more toward not doing that, but we should - as an institution - have a low tolerance for that sort of divergence.

On Thu, Jun 16, 2022, at 17:42, Mark Nottingham wrote:
> Indeed; I could see e.g., browser dev tools automatically presenting a 
> header that it knows is a date  in a friendly way. The only potential 
> issue comes up when it's not recognised as such.
>
> If we decide not to do this, I'm absolutely fine with it; it just means 
> that it's likely things like Deprecation will continue to use a String 
> for dates, whereas Retrofit will use e.g., Integer.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>> On 16 Jun 2022, at 5:34 pm, Martin Thomson <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> The resistance is probably the result of wanting to be able to read the header as it appears in logs.  I still find this to be challenging with seconds-since-epoch.
>> 
>> That said, I no longer believe that readable is a requirement for wire formats.  Tools can do a lot to cover any shortcomings.
>> 
>> On Thu, Jun 16, 2022, at 16:04, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>>> Personally, I tend to agree with PHK - I think that Integer (or 
>>> Decimal) is adquate and appropriate.
>>> 
>>> However, some people seem to keep on pushing back on this - I think 
>>> especially for application-focused headers it's more visible. If we're 
>>> going to do something, retrofit is a good opportunity for it, since 
>>> we're defining SF-Date and friends.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On 16 Jun 2022, at 3:46 pm, Poul-Henning Kamp <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> --------
>>>> Mark Nottingham writes:
>>>> 
>>>>> I'd love to hear what people think about this issue:
>>>>> https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/issues/2162
>>>> 
>>>> I've added this comment:
>>>> 
>>>> 	I see no mention of fractional seconds ?
>>>> 
>>>> 	I think we need to ponder that, if the goal is (eventual) convergence for all timestamps in HTTP ?
>>>> 
>>>> 	Considering how much effort we spend on speeding up HTTP, I find the "human readable" argument utterly bogus.
>>>> 
>>>> 	Only a very tiny fraction of these timestamps are ever read by humans, and most are in a context where software trivially can render the number in 8601 format if so desired.
>>>> 
>>>> 	In terms of efficiency, I will concede that, in a HTTP context, it is almost always possible to perform the necessary calculations and comparisons on raw ISO-8601 timestamps, without resorting to the full calendrical conversions, but once all the necessary paranoia is included, I doubt it is an optimization.
>>>> 
>>>> 	My preference is sf-decimal seconds since epoch, (and this is largely why sf-decimal has three decimals in the first place), because it gives us fast processing, good compression and millisecond resolution.
>>>> 
>>>> 	PS: A Twitter poll with only 40 respondents, carried out on the first monday after new-years ? Really ?!
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
>>>> [e-mail]         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
>>>> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
>>>> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/
>> 
>
> --
> Mark Nottingham   https://www.mnot.net/