Re: [Last-Call] Artart last call review of draft-murchison-rfc8536bis-12

[Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

On 24.03.2024 07:01, Paul Eggert wrote:
>
> I agree with Arthur that the intent is correct here: POSIX 
> compatibility is not required here, although it is recommended, and 
> this means the text should continue to use SHOULD instead of MUST. To 
> document this better, after this section 4 bullet:
>
>    *  Time zone designations SHOULD consist of at least three (3) and no
>       more than six (6) ASCII characters from the set of alphanumerics,
>       '-', and '+'.  This is for compatibility with POSIX requirements
>       for time zone abbreviations.
>
> perhaps we should add the following bullet (I'm trying to channel 
> Arthur...):
>
>    *  Although time zone designations in TZif files can contain
>       arbitrary non-NUL bytes in a practice that predates the
>       widespread use of UTF-8, these can could cause problems if
>       used as-is.  Readers SHOULD instead use POSIX-compatible
>       substitutes when a TZif file's designations are not
>       POSIX-compatible.
>
For version 4 entries, it's possible to make new rules.  So, you could 
instead require a POSIX string for this purpose, but only for version 
4.  Otherwise, I'd leave the text alone.

Eliot


> Not that I know of any reader code that actually does that....
>
>
>
>> Comment 2)
>> quoting Sec 4. Interoperability Considerations: ""application/tzif-leap"
>> (Section 8.2) to indicate that leap-second records are included in 
>> the TZif
>> data "
>>
>> In IANA Considerations section (8), the description for 
>> application/tzif-leap
>> and application/tzif are identical, which does not help a viewer of 
>> the IANA
>> registry to decide which one to use. Suggesting to add text in 8.2
>> "Applications that use this media type" for application/tzif-leap to 
>> the fact
>> that this one includes leap-second records so that the IANA registry 
>> do contain
>> a differentiation text.
>
> Good point. To fix this, in section 8.1 "application/tzif", under 
> "Applications that use this media type:", we could change "time zone 
> information" to "time zone information relative to POSIX time, which 
> does not use leap seconds". Similarly, in section 8.2 we could change 
> "time zone information" to "time zone information relative to 
> Coordinated Universal Time, which does use leap seconds"
>