[plt-scheme] Suggestion for (lib "date.ss"): add timezone to 'american

On Nov 21, 2007 9:18 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
> I like the idea of adding a timezone like this:
>
>   Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 7:11:25am MST
>
> But using "-0700", as in your patch:
>
>   Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 7:11:25am -0700
>
> looks strange to me.

Hi Matthew,

I thought I'd chime in on this. As long as the structure carries with
it the numerical timezone offset, I think this could be OK. However, I
don't know most of the timezone abbreviations in the world, but at a
glance can make sense of the numerical timezones:

+0000

+0100

-0537

(I think that one is Indiana... I could never figure out the timezone
situation in Indiana...)

Granted, that may be because I was living in timezone zero for a
while, and therefore, all the numerical timezone offsets "just made
sense." ("Oh, they're five hours earlier than me.") However, I never
learned the alphabetic codes for +1, +2, etc., so seeing them in an
alphabetic format might just confuse me, rather than help me
immediately parse the time/date.

Cheers,
Matt