[plt-scheme] GMT date stamps and time-zone-offset

From: Geoffrey S. Knauth (geoff at knauth.org)
Date: Sun Aug 19 17:06:44 EDT 2007

On Aug 19, 2007, at 13:16, Jens Axel Søgaard wrote:
> The function seconds->date-string below is supposed to
> return a data stamp using GMT. At first I thought I
> were to adjust for summer time, but it seems that
> happens automatically. But to be on the safe side, I'd
> appreciate, if you try running the snippet below.

I ran your code on 370.6-svn25jul2007 [3m] and got:
"Sun, 19 Aug 2007 20:56:41 GMT" -- which is correct.

I would have expected UTC (modern) instead of GMT (traditional).  I  
never understood why UTC has to be an anagram for both Coordinated  
Universal Time (English) and Temps Universel Coordonné (French).  I  
suspected it was a compromise to make the English and French equally  
miserable, and Wikipedia says as much.  "Coordinated universal time a  
été abrégé en UTC, au lieu de CUT correspondant à l'acronyme en  
anglais ou de TUC correspondant à l'acronyme en français. En effet,  
si les experts de l'UIT étaient d'accord pour définir une abréviation  
commune à toutes les langues, ils étaient divisés sur le choix de la  
langue. Finalement, c'est le compromis UTC, nécessitant un effort des  
deux parties, qui fut choisi." [1]

Geoffrey  (planetarium lecturer in the 1970s)

[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temps_universel_coordonné



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