[LEAPSECS] My FOSDEM slides

[Joseph Gwinn]

On Tue, 03 Mar 2015 14:31:13 -0800, Hal Murray wrote:
> 
>> GPS time (or whatever) is fine in closed projects/environments, but IMO  a
>> UTC and TAI are the "global" time scales, while GPS is specific to 
>> the  U.S.
> 
> Since GPS time is a fixed offset from TAI, it's easy to convert.
> 
> My vote would be to use TAI rather than GPS wherever you are trying 
> to avoid 
> leap seconds.
> 
> (If you are dealing with GPS itself rather than time in general, it might 
> make sense to use GPS time consistently throughout a project.)

GPS System Time became embedded because it was what the available GPS 
receivers supported (in addiction to UTC).

TAI would work as well, were it available in the day.  It is just now 
becoming available from GPS receivers - I saw TAI as a choice in a 
Spectracom receiver, and assume that other makes do this as well.

The key issue is to use a timescale that is free of discontinuities.


Joe Gwinn