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Re: Picking up the ball

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From:
Matt Sergeant
Date:
January 10, 2003 06:30
Subject:
Re: Picking up the ball
Message ID:
Pine.LNX.4.44L.0301101435390.14024-100000@ted.sergeant.org
On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, John Peacock wrote:

> Rich Bowen wrote:
> > I like ICal. But let's make sure that Tai is not the better way to go before
> > we hack something onto an IETF (or whoever it is) standard.
>
> As much as I like DJ Bernstein's coding style (the author of libtai), it is
> unlikely that TAI64 will be appropriate for our use, since it is also based on
> the Olson libraries epoch of 1970-01-01 00:00:10 TAI.
>
> 	http://cr.yp.to/proto/utctai.html
>
> I would prefer a structured variable; separate values for each period of
> importace.  Since some people have explicitly mentioned wanting to handle deep
> prehistory, the thought of subtracting attosecond precision over a range of
> billions of years just scares me!  Of course, Math::BigInt could handle it...

IIRC tai uses negative values to support times earlier than this epoch. I
think it goes back to before the birth date of the earth (though that
might not be long enough for some ;-))

-- 
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