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    FTSC                             FIDONET TECHNICAL STANDARDS COMMITTEE
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    Publication:  FTS-4008
    Revision:     2
    Title:        Time zone information (TZUTC)
    Author:       FTSC
    Issue Date:   16 May 2003
    Review Date:  16 May 2005
    Obsoletes:    FTS-0010.001
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    Contents:
                  1. Introduction
                  2. Scope
                  3. Current practice
                  4. Control paragraph specification
                  5. Time zone table
                  6. Examples
                  A. References
                  B. History
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    Status of this document
    -----------------------

      This document is a Fidonet Technical Standard (FTS), issued by the
      FTSC for the benefit of the Fidonet community.

      This document is based on the FSP-1001 proposal by Odinn Sorensen,
      2:236/77.

      This document is released to the public domain, and may be used,
      copied or modified for any purpose whatsoever.

    1. Introduction
    ---------------

      Current practice in FidoNet is to transmit message times in local
      time.  This document specifies a standard for transmission of time
      zone information in FidoNet messages, in the form of a control
      paragraph (also known as a "control line" or "kludge") named TZUTC.

    2. Scope
    --------

      This standard is specified for the transmission of FidoNet messages
      in any form where time zone information is not integrated into the
      transport format, specifically any form where the information would
      be lost if not transmitted in a control paragraph, eg. Type 2 packed
      messages. [1]

    3. Current practice
    -------------------

      Some control paragraphs already exist to specify the time zone of
      messages, notably "TZUTC" and "TZUTCINFO".  From observations of
      these control paragraphs in actual messages, TZUTC and TZUTCINFO are
      identical except for the name.  TZUTCINFO is probably named after
      the JAM message base's [2] subfield of the same name.

      This document adopts the TZUTC control paragraph because is the
      shortest ("TZUTC" vs "TZUTCINFO").  However, software
      implementations should be prepared to read and interpret the
      TZUTCINFO control paragraph as well.

      The TZUTC control paragraph is inserted before the message body
      upon initial message creation, or export from a format containing
      time zone information, such as the aforementioned JAM message base.

    4. Control paragraph specification
    -----------------------------

      Messages which conform to this specification must add the following
      control paragraph:

        ^aTZUTC: <current offset from UTC>

      Where ^a is ASCII 1, 01h.

      The offset has the format <[-]hhmm>, where hhmm is the number of
      hours and minutes, zero-padded to two digits each, that local time
      is offset from UTC.  If local time is WEST of UTC, then the offset
      is NEGATIVE.  See the table below for typical offsets.

      Note that the hh in a time zone offset is not limited to a maximum
      of 12.  This is because the International Date Line does not run
      exactly along the boundary between zone -1200 and +1200.  The
      minutes part is 00 for most time zones.

      All four digits must be present.  If the offset is negative, there
      must be a minus ('-', ASCII 45, 2Dh) in front of the offset.

      Implementations must NOT put a plus ('+', ASCII 43, 2Bh) in front of
      the offset for positive numbers, but robust implementations should
      be prepared to find (and ignore) a plus if it exists.

      If local time changes as a result of, for example, daylight savings
      time, then the offset in the TZUTC control paragraph should change
      to reflect this.

    5. Time zone table
    ------------------

      This table gives examples of typical time zones.

      -1000   Alaska-Hawaii Standard Time (United States)
      -0900   Hawaii Daylight Time
      -0800   Pacific Standard Time
      -0700   Pacific Daylight Time
      -0700   Mountain Standard Time
      -0600   Mountain Daylight Time
      -0600   Central Standard Time
      -0500   Central Daylight Time
      -0500   Eastern Standard Time
      -0400   Eastern Daylight Time
      -0400   Atlantic Standard Time
      -0330   Newfoundland Standard Time
      -0300   Atlantic Daylight Time
      -0100   West Africa Time
       0000   Universal Time Coordinated (UTC)
       0000   Greenwich Mean Time
       0100   Central European Time
       0100   British Summer Time
       0200   Central European Summer Time
       0200   Eastern European Time
       0800   Australian Western Standard Time
       0800   China Coast Time
       0900   Japan Standard Time
       0900   Australian Western Daylight Time
       0930   Australian Central Standard Time
       1000   Australian Eastern Standard Time
       1030   Australian Central Daylight Time
       1100   Australian Eastern Daylight Time
       1200   New Zealand Standard Time
       1300   New Zealand Daylight Time

    6. Examples
    -----------

      ^aTZUTC: 0000
      ^aTZUTC: 0200
      ^aTZUTC: -0700

    A. References
    -------------

      [1] "A Basic FidoNet(r) Technical Standard Revision 16", Randy Bush.
      September 1995.

      [2] "The JAM message base proposal", Joaquim Homrighausen, Andrew
      Milner, Mats Birch and Mats Wallin. July 1993.

    B. History
    ----------

      Rev.1, 20030409: First release (revised from FSP-1001 by FTSC)
      Rev.2, 20030516: Corrected status; clarified Section 2 on insertion
                       position and export practice; fixed terminology.

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