[LEAPSECS] EBML: yet another date format?
Daniel R. Tobias
dan at tobias.name
Sat Jun 27 12:14:08 EDT 2015
It appears that yet another date format (queue up that XKCD comic on
standards...) is being proposed as part of the spec for EBML, a
binary markup language intended to be a binary-file equivalent of
XML. The way dates are defined there is:
signed 8 octets integer in nanoseconds with 0
indicating the precise beginning of the
millennium (at 2001-01-01T00:00:00.000000000 UTC)
No indication is given of how leap seconds are supposed to be
handled; if this is to be a continuous count, then converting it to
human-readable dates/times would require knowing the complete table
of leap seconds (and knowing what time scale is to be used
proleptically if dealing with dates prior to 1972). Or if it's to be
treated like Unix-time dates where leap seconds are ignored, then
there wouldn't be any way to represent the times within the leap
second. As long as more specifics are not given on these points,
implementers are bound to make contradictory assumptions and get this
standard as screwed-up as many existing ones are.
Can somebody do the math to figure out what range of dates would be
supported by a signed 8-octet integer in nanoseconds centered on
2001-01-01?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
More information about the LEAPSECS
mailing list