********************************************************************** FTSC FIDONET TECHNICAL STANDARDS COMMITTEE ********************************************************************** Publication: FTS-0010 Revision: 1 Title: Time zone information in FidoNet messages Authors: Odinn Sorensen, 2:236/77 Andrew Clarke, 3:633/267 Issue Date: 09 April 2003 Review Date: 09 April 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: 1. Scope 2. Current practice 3. Control line specification 4. Time zone table 5. Examples A. References B. Author contact information C. History ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Status of this document ----------------------- This document is a FidoNet Standards Proposal (FSP) and specifies an optional standard for the FidoNet community. It is released to the public domain, and may be used, copied or modified for any purpose whatsoever. Abstract -------- 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 line (also known as a "kludge" or "kludge line") named TZUTC. 1. 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 line, eg. Type 2 packed messages. [1] 2. Current practice ------------------- Some control lines already exist to specify the time zone of messages, notably "TZUTC" and "TZUTCINFO". From observations of these control lines 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 line because is the shortest ("TZUTC" vs "TZUTCINFO"). 3. Control line specification ----------------------------- Messages which conform to this specification must add the following control line: ^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 timezones. 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 line should change to reflect this. 4. 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 5. 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. Author contact information ----------------------------- Odinn Sorensen FidoNet: 2:236/77 E-mail: odinn@goldware.dk WWW: http://www.goldware.dk/ Andrew Clarke FidoNet: 3:633/267 E-mail: mail@ozzmosis.com WWW: http://www.ozzmosis.com/ C. History ---------- Rev.1, 20030409: First release. **********************************************************************