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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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