On 2026-10-01 06:40, Mirco Babin wrote:
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Comment 2
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The RFC states:
An Time\Instant carries no timezone. It represents a unique point
on the timeline of the universe.
Why is there no explicit or implicit timezone attached? The RFC reads
to me like there is an implicit timezone attached, namely the UTC
timezone. Especially the `toIso8601DateTimeString()` function which
always returns the 'Z' timezone identifier seems to imply an implicit
UTC timezone?
I think I can answer that one. It's because for display purposes some
consistent way of labelling Instants is required so that they can be
displayed. Using an ISO8601 string just makes that label human-readable;
the UTC timezone is not an intrinsic property of the Instant but of the
labelling (nor are the labels themselves, for that matter). Instants
would still be a thing and people would be able to say that two events
occurred "at the same time" even if the International Meridian
Conference had never happened.
(I mentioned earlier during the Duration discussion that time arithmetic
is a one-dimensional real affine space. Such a space can be formalised
as a set of points and a space of free vectors (and a way to add points
and vectors together). Here, Durations provide the vectors and Instants
provide the points.)
I think *precision* should somehow be an explicit part of \Time\Instant
class. How precise is the \Time\Instant?
Well, then it's not an _instant_, is it? It's a combination of an
instant ("now") and a duration ("and the subsequent sixty seconds").
