[LEAPSECS] Java JSR-310 TAIInstant class

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 30 January 2011 01:54, Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> wrote:

> On 2011 Jan 29, at 17:34, Steve Allen wrote:

>> So I caution that JSR-310 is really creating a new time scale which

>> cannot be extrapolated into the past and which will only cause

>> confusion by claiming the name TAI when it cannot be TAI.

>

> and if the BIPM follows through with the suggestion that the CCTF

> made to ITU-R WP7A in 2007, which is "suppressing TAI", then it

> make a lot of sense to define your own uniform time scale with

> its own name and to assert nothing more than that during certain

> ranges of time it happens to have the characteristics of TAI.


Solid reasoning if you care about exact and precise definitions as
this list does.

Unfortunately, there are three classes of user of JSR-310 - experts
(such as those on this list), the masses (who know none of this and
don't care) and those who think they are experts but aren't. This last
category includes those that have heard of TAI and are therefore
looking for it but don't fully understand the limitations.

I might be willing to call the scale TAI-Java. This would satisfy
experts (its not TAI) the masses (they don't care) and the
part-informed (who can identify it by the TAI name, and would then
discover its limitations).

More broadly, given that TAI has gained some (not a lot, but
definitely some) traction outside the expert community as the single
best defined unambiguous, continuous time-scale, it seems extremely
strange to have any desire to destroy it.

Stephen