From: Tanaka Akira <akr@...>
Date: 2009-03-19T16:47:58+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:22949] Re: Ruby Time

In article <9e19ed87-9d12-4f98-af3c-bd49a71b0bd4@p11g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
  valodzka <valodzka@gmail.com> writes:

> Got tired of current ruby Time limitation, I have written this -
> http://github.com/valodzka/time2/tree/master
>
> I would like to hear your thoughts concerning it, and first of all -
> whether there should be it a part of core or not?

I think Ruby should not include timezone database because
its maintainance.

However it may be considerable to extend Time to hold arbitrary time
offset from UTC, as DateTime:

p DateTime.new(2009,1,1,0,0,0,Rational(9,24))
#=> #<DateTime: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+09:00 (19638657/8,3/8,2299161)>

p DateTime.new(2009,1,1,0,0,0,-Rational(5,24))
#=> #<DateTime: 2009-01-01T00:00:00-05:00 (58915985/24,-5/24,2299161)>

The fixed time offset doesn't need timezone database.  So it
has no maintainance problem.

If it is implemented, a time in a timezone can be
reprensented using a Time object with corresponding time
offset.

The time offset of "time + sec" will be same as as
the "time" which may not be correct in the timezone, though.
-- 
Tanaka Akira