********************************************************************** FTSC FIDONET TECHNICAL STANDARDS COMMITTEE ********************************************************************** Publication: FTS-4008 Revision: 2 Title: Time zone information (TZUTC) Author: FTSC Issue Date: 16 May 2003 Review Date: 16 May 2005 Obsoletes: FTS-0010.001 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Scope 3. Current practice 4. Control paragraph specification 5. Time zone table 6. Examples A. References B. History ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Status of this document ----------------------- This document is a Fidonet Technical Standard (FTS), issued by the FTSC for the benefit of the Fidonet community. This document is based on the FSP-1001 proposal by Odinn Sorensen, 2:236/77. This document is released to the public domain, and may be used, copied or modified for any purpose whatsoever. 1. Introduction --------------- Current practice in FidoNet is to transmit message times in local time. This document specifies a standard for transmission of time zone information in FidoNet messages, in the form of a control paragraph (also known as a "control line" or "kludge") named TZUTC. 2. Scope -------- This standard is specified for the transmission of FidoNet messages in any form where time zone information is not integrated into the transport format, specifically any form where the information would be lost if not transmitted in a control paragraph, eg. Type 2 packed messages. [1] 3. Current practice ------------------- Some control paragraphs already exist to specify the time zone of messages, notably "TZUTC" and "TZUTCINFO". From observations of these control paragraphs in actual messages, TZUTC and TZUTCINFO are identical except for the name. TZUTCINFO is probably named after the JAM message base's [2] subfield of the same name. This document adopts the TZUTC control paragraph because is the shortest ("TZUTC" vs "TZUTCINFO"). However, software implementations should be prepared to read and interpret the TZUTCINFO control paragraph as well. The TZUTC control paragraph is inserted before the message body upon initial message creation, or export from a format containing time zone information, such as the aforementioned JAM message base. 4. Control paragraph specification ----------------------------- Messages which conform to this specification must add the following control paragraph: ^aTZUTC: Where ^a is ASCII 1, 01h. The offset has the format <[-]hhmm>, where hhmm is the number of hours and minutes, zero-padded to two digits each, that local time is offset from UTC. If local time is WEST of UTC, then the offset is NEGATIVE. See the table below for typical offsets. Note that the hh in a time zone offset is not limited to a maximum of 12. This is because the International Date Line does not run exactly along the boundary between zone -1200 and +1200. The minutes part is 00 for most time zones. All four digits must be present. If the offset is negative, there must be a minus ('-', ASCII 45, 2Dh) in front of the offset. Implementations must NOT put a plus ('+', ASCII 43, 2Bh) in front of the offset for positive numbers, but robust implementations should be prepared to find (and ignore) a plus if it exists. If local time changes as a result of, for example, daylight savings time, then the offset in the TZUTC control paragraph should change to reflect this. 5. Time zone table ------------------ This table gives examples of typical time zones. -1000 Alaska-Hawaii Standard Time (United States) -0900 Hawaii Daylight Time -0800 Pacific Standard Time -0700 Pacific Daylight Time -0700 Mountain Standard Time -0600 Mountain Daylight Time -0600 Central Standard Time -0500 Central Daylight Time -0500 Eastern Standard Time -0400 Eastern Daylight Time -0400 Atlantic Standard Time -0330 Newfoundland Standard Time -0300 Atlantic Daylight Time -0100 West Africa Time 0000 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) 0000 Greenwich Mean Time 0100 Central European Time 0100 British Summer Time 0200 Central European Summer Time 0200 Eastern European Time 0800 Australian Western Standard Time 0800 China Coast Time 0900 Japan Standard Time 0900 Australian Western Daylight Time 0930 Australian Central Standard Time 1000 Australian Eastern Standard Time 1030 Australian Central Daylight Time 1100 Australian Eastern Daylight Time 1200 New Zealand Standard Time 1300 New Zealand Daylight Time 6. Examples ----------- ^aTZUTC: 0000 ^aTZUTC: 0200 ^aTZUTC: -0700 A. References ------------- [1] "A Basic FidoNet(r) Technical Standard Revision 16", Randy Bush. September 1995. [2] "The JAM message base proposal", Joaquim Homrighausen, Andrew Milner, Mats Birch and Mats Wallin. July 1993. B. History ---------- Rev.1, 20030409: First release (revised from FSP-1001 by FTSC) Rev.2, 20030516: Corrected status; clarified Section 2 on insertion position and export practice; fixed terminology. **********************************************************************