





Network Working Group                        G. Klyne, MIMEsweeper Group
Internet Draft                               C. Newman, Sun Microsystems
                                                         2 November 2001
                                                       Expires: May 2002


               Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps
                   <draft-ietf-impp-datetime-05.txt>


Status of this memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
   other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
   Drafts.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress".

     The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
     http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html

     The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
     http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html


Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society 2001.  All Rights Reserved.


Abstract

   This document defines a date and time format for use in Internet
   protocols that is a profile of the ISO 8601 [ISO8601] standard for
   representation of dates and times using the Gregorian calendar.









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Table of Contents

   1. Introduction
   2. Definitions
   3. Two Digit Years
   4. Local Time
   4.1. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
   4.2. Local Offsets
   4.3. Unknown Local Offset Convention
   4.4. Unqualified Local Time
   5. Date and Time format
   5.1. Ordering
   5.2. Human Readability
   5.3. Rarely Used Options
   5.4. Redundant Information
   5.5. Simplicity
   5.6. Internet Date/Time Format
   5.7. Restrictions
   5.8. Examples
   6. Acknowledgements
   7. References
   8. Security Considerations
   9. Authors' Addresses
   Appendix A. ISO 8601 Collected ABNF
   Appendix B. Day of the Week
   Appendix C. Leap Years
   Appendix D. Leap Seconds
   Appendix E. Amendment history
   Full copyright statement

1. Introduction

   Date and time formats cause a lot of confusion and interoperability
   problems on the Internet.  This document addresses many of the
   problems encountered and makes recommendations to improve consistency
   and interoperability when representing and using date and time in
   Internet protocols.

   This document includes an Internet profile of the ISO 8601 [ISO8601]
   standard for representation of dates and times using the Gregorian
   calendar.










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   There are many ways in which date and time values might appear in
   Internet protocols:  this document focuses on just one common usage,
   viz. timestamps for Internet protocol events.  This limited
   consideration has the following consequences:

   o  All dates and times are assumed to be in the "current era",
      somewhere between 0000AD and 9999AD.

   o  All times expressed have a stated relationship (offset) to
      Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  (This is distinct from some
      usage in scheduling applications where a local time and location
      may be known, but the actual relationship to UTC may be dependent
      on the unknown or unknowable actions of politicians or
      administrators.  The UTC time corresponding to 17:00 on 23rd March
      2005 in New York may depend on administrative decisions about
      daylight savings time.  This specification steers well clear of
      such considerations.)

   o  Timestamps can express times that occurred before the introduction
      of UTC.  Such timestamps are expressed relative to universal time,
      using the best available practice at the stated time.

   o  Date and time expressions indicate an instant in time.
      Description of time periods, or intervals, is not covered here.


2. Definitions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

   UTC         Coordinated Universal Time as maintained by the Bureau
               International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM).

   second      A basic unit of measurement of time in the International
               System of Units.  It is defined as the duration of
               9,192,631,770 cycles of microwave light absorbed or
               emitted by the hyperfine transition of cesium-133 atoms
               in their ground state undisturbed by external fields.

   minute      A period of time of 60 seconds.  However, see also the
               restrictions in section 5.7 and Appendix D for how leap
               seconds are denoted within minutes.

   hour        A period of time of 60 minutes.





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   day         A period of time of 24 hours.

   leap year   In the Gregorian calendar, a year which has 366 days.  A
               leap year is a year whose number is divisible by four an
               integral number of times, except that if it is a
               centennial year (i.e. divisible by one hundred) it shall
               also be divisible by four hundred an integral number of
               times.

   ABNF        Augmented Backus-Naur Form, a format used to represent
               permissible strings in a protocol or language, as defined
               in [ABNF].

   Email Date/Time Format
               The date/time format used by Internet Mail as defined by
               RFC 2822 [IMAIL-UPDATE].

   Internet Date/Time Format
               The date format defined in section 5 of this document.

   Timestamp   This term is used in this document to refer to an
               unambiguous representation of some instant in time.

   For more information about time scales, see Appendix E of [NTP],
   Section 3 of [ISO8601], and the appropriate ITU documents [ITU-R-TF].


3. Two Digit Years

   The following requirements are to address the problems of ambiguity
   of 2-digit years:

   o  Internet Protocols MUST generate four digit years in dates.

   o  The use of 2-digit years is deprecated.  If a 2-digit year is
      received, it should be accepted ONLY if an incorrect
      interpretation will not cause a protocol or processing failure
      (e.g. if used only for logging or tracing purposes).

   o  It is possible that a program using two digit years will represent
      years after 1999 as three digits.  This occurs if the program
      simply subtracts 1900 from the year and doesn't check the number
      of digits.  Programs wishing to robustly deal with dates generated
      by such broken software may add 1900 to three digit years.







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   o  It is possible that a program using two digit years will represent
      years after 1999 as ":0", ":1", ... ":9", ";0", ...  This occurs
      if the program simply subtracts 1900 from the year and adds the
      decade to the US-ASCII character zero. Programs wishing to
      robustly deal with dates generated by such broken software should
      detect non-numeric decades and interpret appropriately.

   The problems with two digit years amply demonstrate why all dates and
   times used in Internet protocols MUST be fully qualified.


4. Local Time

4.1. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

   Because the daylight saving rules for local time zones are so
   convoluted and can change based on local law at unpredictable times,
   true interoperability is best achieved by using Coordinated Universal
   Time (UTC).  This specification does not cater to local time zone
   rules.

4.2. Local Offsets

   The offset between local time and UTC is often useful information.
   For example, in electronic mail (RFC2822, [IMAIL-UPDATE]) the local
   offset provides a useful heuristic to determine the probability of a
   prompt response.  Attempts to label local offsets with alphabetic
   strings have resulted in poor interoperability in the past [IMAIL],
   [HOST-REQ].  As a result, RFC2822 [IMAIL-UPDATE] has made numeric
   offsets mandatory.

   Numeric offsets are calculated as "local time minus UTC".  So the
   equivalent time in UTC can be determined by subtracting the offset
   from the local time.  For example, 18:50:00-04:00 is the same time as
   22:50:00Z.


      NOTE: Following ISO 8601, numeric offsets represent only time
      zones that differ from UTC by an integral number of minutes.
      However, many historical time zones differ from UTC by a non-
      integral number of minutes.  To represent such historical time
      stamps exactly, applications must convert them to a representable
      time zone.








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4.3. Unknown Local Offset Convention

   If the time in UTC is known, but the offset to local time is unknown,
   this can be represented with an offset of "-00:00".  This differs
   semantically from an offset of "Z" or "+00:00", which imply that UTC
   is the preferred reference point for the specified time.  RFC2822
   [IMAIL-UPDATE] describes a similar convention for email.

4.4. Unqualified Local Time

   A number of devices currently connected to the Internet run their
   internal clocks in local time and are unaware of UTC.  While the
   Internet does have a tradition of accepting reality when creating
   specifications, this should not be done at the expense of
   interoperability.  Since interpretation of an unqualified local time
   zone will fail in approximately 23/24 of the globe, the
   interoperability problems of unqualified local time are deemed
   unacceptable for the Internet.  Systems that are configured with a
   local time, are unaware of the corresponding UTC offset, and depend
   on time synchronization with other Internet systems, MUST use a
   mechanism that ensures correct synchronization with UTC.  Some
   suitable mechanisms are:

   o  Use Network Time Protocol [NTP] to obtain the time in UTC.

   o  Use another host in the same local time zone as a gateway to the
      Internet.  This host MUST correct unqualified local times they are
      transmitted to other hosts.

   o  Prompt the user for the local time zone and daylight saving rule
      settings.


5. Date and Time format

   This section discusses desirable qualities of date and time formats
   and defines a profile of ISO 8601 for use in Internet protocols.

5.1. Ordering

   If date and time components are ordered from least precise to most
   precise, then a useful property is achieved.  Assuming that the time
   zones of the dates and times are the same (e.g. all in UTC),
   expressed using the same string (e.g. all "Z" or all "+00:00"), and
   all times have the same number of fractional second digits, then the
   date and time strings may be sorted as strings (e.g. using the
   strcmp() function in C) and a time-ordered sequence will result.  The
   presence of optional punctuation would violate this characteristic.



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5.2. Human Readability

   Human readability has proved to be a valuable feature of Internet
   protocols.  Human readable protocols greatly reduce the costs of
   debugging since telnet often suffices as a test client and network
   analyzers need not be modified with knowledge of the protocol.  On
   the other hand, human readability sometimes results in
   interoperability problems.  For example, the date format "10/11/1996"
   is completely unsuitable for global interchange because it is
   interpreted differently in different countries.  In addition, the
   date format in [IMAIL] has resulted in interoperability problems when
   people assumed any text string was permitted and translated the three
   letter abbreviations to other languages or substituted date formats
   which were easier to generate (e.g. the format used by the C function
   ctime).  For this reason, a balance must be struck between human
   readability and interoperability.

   Because no date and time format is readable according to the
   conventions of all countries, Internet clients SHOULD be prepared to
   transform dates into a display format suitable for the locality.
   This may include translating UTC to local time.

5.3. Rarely Used Options

   A format which includes rarely used options is likely to cause
   interoperability problems.  This is because rarely used options are
   less likely to be used in alpha or beta testing, so bugs in parsing
   are less likely to be discovered.  Rarely used options should be made
   mandatory or omitted for the sake of interoperability whenever
   possible.

   The format defined below includes only one rarely used option:
   fractions of a second.  It is expected that this will be used only by
   applications which require strict ordering of date/time stamps or
   which have an unusual precision requirement.

5.4. Redundant Information

   If a date/time format includes redundant information, that introduces
   the possibility that the redundant information will not correlate.
   For example, including the day of the week in a date/time format
   introduces the possibility that the day of week is incorrect but the
   date is correct, or vice versa.  Since it is not difficult to compute
   the day of week from a date (see Appendix B), the day of week should
   not be included in a date/time format.






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5.5. Simplicity

   The complete set of date and time formats specified in ISO 8601
   [ISO8601] is quite complex in an attempt to provide multiple
   representations and partial representations.  Appendix A contains an
   attempt to translate the complete syntax of ISO 8601 into ABNF.
   Internet protocols have somewhat different requirements and
   simplicity has proved to be an important characteristic.  In
   addition, Internet protocols usually need complete specification of
   data in order to achieve true interoperability.  Therefore, the
   complete grammar for ISO 8601 is deemed too complex for most Internet
   protocols.

   The following section defines a profile of ISO 8601 for use on the
   Internet.  It is a conformant subset of the ISO 8601 extended format.
   Simplicity is achieved by making most fields and punctuation
   mandatory.

5.6. Internet Date/Time Format

   The following profile of ISO 8601 [ISO8601] dates SHOULD be used in
   new protocols on the Internet.  This is specified using the syntax
   description notation defined in [ABNF].

      date-fullyear   = 4DIGIT
      date-month      = 2DIGIT  ; 01-12
      date-mday       = 2DIGIT  ; 01-28, 01-29, 01-30, 01-31 based on month/year
      time-hour       = 2DIGIT  ; 00-23
      time-minute     = 2DIGIT  ; 00-59
      time-second     = 2DIGIT  ; 00-58, 00-59, 00-60 based on leap second rules
      time-secfrac    = "." 1*DIGIT
      time-numoffset  = ("+" / "-") time-hour ":" time-minute
      time-offset     = "Z" / time-numoffset

      partial-time    = time-hour ":" time-minute ":" time-second
                        [time-secfrac]
      full-date       = date-fullyear "-" date-month "-" date-mday
      full-time       = partial-time time-offset

      date-time       = full-date "T" full-time


     NOTE: Per [ABNF] and ISO8601, the "T" and "Z" characters in
     this syntax may alternatively be lower case "t" or "z"
     respectively.

     NOTE: ISO 8601 defines date and time separated by "T".
     Applications using this syntax may choose, for the sake of



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     readability, to specify a full-date and full-time separated by
     (say) a space character.


5.7. Restrictions

   The grammar element date-mday represents the day number within the
   current month.  The maximum value varies based on the month and year
   as follows:

      Month Number  Month/Year           Maximum value of date-mday
      ------------  ----------           --------------------------
      01            January              31
      02            February, normal     28
      02            February, leap year  29
      03            March                31
      04            April                30
      05            May                  31
      06            June                 30
      07            July                 31
      08            August               31
      09            September            30
      10            October              31
      11            November             30
      12            December             31

   Appendix C contains sample C code to determine if a year is a leap
   year.

   The grammar element time-second may have the value "60" at the end of
   months in which a leap second occurs -- to date: June
   (XXXX-06-30T23:59:60Z) or December (XXXX-12-31T23:59:60Z); see
   Appendix D for a table of leap seconds.  It is also possible for a
   leap second to be subtracted, at which times the maximum value of
   time-second is "58".  At all other times the maximum value of
   time-second is "59".  Further, in time zones other than "Z", the leap
   second point is shifted by the zone offset (so it happens at the same
   instant around the globe).

   Leap seconds cannot be predicted far into the future.  The
   International Earth Rotation Service publishes bulletins [IERS] that
   announce leap seconds with a few weeks' warning.  Applications should
   not generate timestamps involving inserted leap seconds until after
   the leap seconds are announced.

   Although ISO 8601 permits the hour to be "24", this profile of ISO
   8601 only allows values between "00" and "23" for the hour in order
   to reduce confusion.



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5.8. Examples

   Here are some examples of Internet date/time format.

      1985-04-12T23:20:50.52Z

   This represents 20 minutes and 50.52 seconds after the 23rd hour of
   April 12th, 1985 in UTC.

      1996-12-19T16:39:57-08:00

   This represents 39 minutes and 57 seconds after the 16th hour of
   December 19th, 1996 with an offset of -08:00 from UTC (Pacific
   Standard Time).  Note that this is equivalent to 1996-12-20T00:39:57Z
   in UTC.

      1990-12-31T23:59:60Z

   This represents the leap second inserted at the end of 1990.

      1990-12-31T15:59:60-08:00

   This represents the same leap second in Pacific Standard Time, 8
   hours behind UTC.

      1937-01-01T12:00:27.87+00:20

   This represents the same instant of time as noon, January 1, 1937,
   Netherlands time.  Standard time in the Netherlands was exactly 19
   minutes and 32.13 seconds ahead of UTC by law from 1909-05-01 through
   1937-06-30.  This time zone cannot be represented exactly using the
   HH:MM format, and this timestamp uses the closest representable UTC
   offset.



6. Acknowledgements

   The following people provided helpful advice for an earlier
   incarnation of this document:  Ned Freed, Neal McBurnett, David
   Keegel, Markus Kuhn, Paul Eggert and Robert Elz.  Thanks are also due
   to participants of the IETF Calendaring/Scheduling working group
   mailing list, and participants of the time zone mailing list.

   The following reviewers contributed helpful suggestions for the
   present revision: Tom Harsch, Markus Kuhn, Pete Resnick, Dan Kohn.
   Paul Eggert provided many careful observations regarding the
   subtleties of leap seconds and time zone offsets.



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7. References

   [Zeller]    Chr. Zeller, "Kalender-Formeln", Acta Mathematica, Vol.
               9, Nov 1886.

   [IMAIL]     Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of Arpa Internet
               Text Messages", RFC 822, August 1982.

   [IMAIL-UPDATE]
               Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April
               2001.

   [ABNF]      Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
               Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.

   [ISO8601]   "Data elements and interchange formats -- Information
               interchange -- Representation of dates and times", ISO
               8601:1988(E), International Organization for
               Standardization, June, 1988.

   [ISO8601:2000]
               "Data elements and interchange formats -- Information
               interchange -- Representation of dates and times", ISO
               8601:2000, International Organization for
               Standardization, December, 2000.

   [HOST-REQ]  Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts --
               Application and Support", RFC 1123, Internet Engineering
               Task Force, October 1989.

   [IERS]      International Earth Rotation Service Bulletins,
               <http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/products/bulletins.html>.

   [NTP]       Mills, D., "Network Time Protocol (Version 3)
               Specification, Implementation and Analysis", RFC 1305,
               University of Delaware, March 1992.

   [ITU-R-TF]  International Telecommunication Union Recommendations for
               Time Signals and Frequency Standards Emissions.
               <http://www.itu.ch/publications/itu-r/iturtf.htm>

   [RFC2119]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
               Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, Internet Engineering Task
               Force, March 1997.







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8. Security Considerations

   Since the local time zone of a site may be useful for determining a
   time when systems are less likely to be monitored and might be more
   susceptible to a security probe, some sites may wish to emit times in
   UTC only.  Others might consider this to be loss of useful
   functionality at the hands of paranoia.


9. Authors' Addresses

   Chris Newman
   Sun Microsystems
   1050 Lakes Drive, Suite 250
   West Covina, CA 91790 USA

   Email: cnewman@iplanet.com

   Graham Klyne (editor, this revision)
   MIMEsweeper Group
   1310 Waterside
   Arlington Business Park
   Theale
   Reading, RG7 4SA
   United Kingdom.
   Telephone: +44 118 903 8000
   Facsimile: +44 118 903 9000
   E-mail:    GK@ACM.ORG


Appendix A. ISO 8601 Collected ABNF

   This information is based on the 1988 version of ISO 8601.  There may
   be some changes in the 2000 revision.

   ISO 8601 does not specify a formal grammar for the date and time
   formats it defines.  The following is an attempt to create a formal
   grammar from ISO 8601.  This is informational only and may contain
   errors.  ISO 8601 remains the authoritative reference.

   Note that due to ambiguities in ISO 8601, some interpretations had to
   be made.  First, ISO 8601 is not clear if mixtures of basic and
   extended format are permissible.  This grammar permits mixtures.  ISO
   8601 is not clear on whether an hour of 24 is permissible only if
   minutes and seconds are 0.  This assumes that an hour of 24 is
   permissible in any context.  Restrictions on date-mday in section 5.7
   apply.  ISO 8601 states that the "T" may be omitted under some
   circumstances.  This grammar requires the "T" to avoid ambiguity.



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   ISO 8601 also requires (in section 5.3.1.3) that a decimal fraction
   be proceeded by a "0" if less than unity.  Annex B.2 of ISO 8601
   gives examples where the decimal fractions are not preceded by a "0".
   This grammar assumes section 5.3.1.3 is correct and that Annex B.2 is
   in error.

      date-century    = 2DIGIT  ; 00-99
      date-decade     =  DIGIT  ; 0-9
      date-subdecade  =  DIGIT  ; 0-9
      date-year       = date-decade date-subdecade
      date-fullyear   = date-century date-year
      date-month      = 2DIGIT  ; 01-12
      date-wday       =  DIGIT  ; 1-7  ; 1 is Monday, 7 is Sunday
      date-mday       = 2DIGIT  ; 01-28, 01-29, 01-30, 01-31 based on month/year
      date-yday       = 3DIGIT  ; 001-365, 001-366 based on year
      date-week       = 2DIGIT  ; 01-52, 01-53 based on year

      datepart-fullyear = [date-century] date-year ["-"]
      datepart-ptyear   = "-" [date-subdecade ["-"]]
      datepart-wkyear   = datepart-ptyear / datepart-fullyear

      dateopt-century   = "-" / date-century
      dateopt-fullyear  = "-" / datepart-fullyear
      dateopt-year      = "-" / (date-year ["-"])
      dateopt-month     = "-" / (date-month ["-"])
      dateopt-week      = "-" / (date-week ["-"])

      datespec-full     = datepart-fullyear date-month ["-"] date-mday
      datespec-year     = date-century / dateopt-century date-year
      datespec-month    = "-" dateopt-year date-month [["-"] date-mday]
      datespec-mday     = "--" dateopt-month date-mday
      datespec-week     = datepart-wkyear "W"
                          (date-week / dateopt-week date-wday)
      datespec-wday     = "---" date-wday
      datespec-yday     = dateopt-fullyear date-yday

      date              = datespec-full / datespec-year / datespec-month /
          datespec-mday / datespec-week / datespec-wday / datespec-yday













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   Time:

      time-hour         = 2DIGIT ; 00-24
      time-minute       = 2DIGIT ; 00-59
      time-second       = 2DIGIT ; 00-58, 00-59, 00-60 based on leap-second rules
      time-fraction     = ("," / ".") 1*DIGIT
      time-numoffset    = ("+" / "-") time-hour [[":"] time-minute]
      time-zone         = "Z" / time-numoffset

      timeopt-hour      = "-" / (time-hour [":"])
      timeopt-minute    = "-" / (time-minute [":"])

      timespec-hour     = time-hour [[":"] time-minute [[":"] time-second]]
      timespec-minute   = timeopt-hour time-minute [[":"] time-second]
      timespec-second   = "-" timeopt-minute time-second
      timespec-base     = timespec-hour / timespec-minute / timespec-second

      time              = timespec-base [time-fraction] [time-zone]

      iso-date-time     = date "T" time

   Durations:

      dur-second        = 1*DIGIT "S"
      dur-minute        = 1*DIGIT "M" [dur-second]
      dur-hour          = 1*DIGIT "H" [dur-minute]
      dur-time          = "T" (dur-hour / dur-minute / dur-second)
      dur-day           = 1*DIGIT "D"
      dur-week          = 1*DIGIT "W"
      dur-month         = 1*DIGIT "M" [dur-day]
      dur-year          = 1*DIGIT "Y" [dur-month]
      dur-date          = (dur-day / dur-month / dur-year) [dur-time]

      duration          = "P" (dur-date / dur-time / dur-week)

   Periods:

      period-explicit   = date-time "/" date-time
      period-start      = date-time "/" duration
      period-end        = duration "/" date-time

      period            = period-explicit / period-start / period-end









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Appendix B. Day of the Week

   The following is a sample C subroutine loosely based on Zeller's
   Congruence [Zeller] which may be used to obtain the day of the week
   for dates on or after 0000-02-01:


      char *day_of_week(int day, int month, int year)
      {
          int cent;
          char *dayofweek[] = {
              "Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday",
              "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"
          };

          /* adjust months so February is the last one */
          month -= 2;
          if (month < 1) {
              month += 12;
              --year;
          }
          /* split by century */
          cent = year / 100;
          year %= 100;
          return (dayofweek[((26 * month - 2) / 10 + day + year
                            + year / 4 + cent / 4 - 2 * cent) % 7]);
      }



Appendix C. Leap Years

   Here is a sample C subroutine to calculate if a year is a leap year:


      /* This returns non-zero if year is a leap year.  Must use 4 digit year.
       */
      int leap_year(int year)
      {
          return (year % 4 == 0 && (year % 100 != 0 || year % 400 == 0));
      }










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Appendix D. Leap Seconds

   Information about leap seconds can be found at:
   <http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html>.  In particular, it notes
   that:

      The decision to introduce a leap second in UTC is the
      responsibility of the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS).
      According to the CCIR Recommendation, first preference is given to
      the opportunities at the end of December and June, and second
      preference to those at the end of March and September.

   When required, insertion of a leap second occurs as an extra second
   at the end of a day in UTC, represented by a timestamp of the form
   YYYY-MM-DDT23:59:60Z.  A leap second occurs simultaneously in all
   time zones, so that time zone relationships are not affected.  See
   section 5.8 for some examples of leap second times.

   The following table is an excerpt from the table maintained by the
   United States Naval Observatory.  The source data is located at:

      <ftp://maia.usno.navy.mil/ser7/tai-utc.dat>





























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   This table shows the date of the leap second, and the difference
   between the time standard TAI (which isn't adjusted by leap seconds)
   and UTC after that leap second.


      UTC Date  TAI - UTC After Leap Second
      --------  ---------------------------
      1972-06-30     11
      1972-12-31     12
      1973-12-31     13
      1974-12-31     14
      1975-12-31     15
      1976-12-31     16
      1977-12-31     17
      1978-12-31     18
      1979-12-31     19
      1981-06-30     20
      1982-06-30     21
      1983-06-30     22
      1985-06-30     23
      1987-12-31     24
      1989-12-31     25
      1990-12-31     26
      1992-06-30     27
      1993-06-30     28
      1994-06-30     29
      1995-12-31     30
      1997-06-30     31
      1998-12-31     32


Appendix E. Amendment history

[[[RFC editor:  please remove this appendix on publication.]]]


00a 30-Mar-2001 This document version created from Chris Newman's
                original as 'draft-ietf-impp-datetime-00.txt'.  Material
                relating to future times (schedule events) and time zone
                names has been removed.  Added introductory text setting
                the scope for this document.  Various small editorial
                changes.

00b 03-Apr-2001 Added reference [ABNF], and updated citations.  Added
                comment about possible use of space-separated date/time
                fields.  Added comment about possible use of lower case
                "t" and "z" in syntax.  Corrected leap-second examples
                and noted that leap second point is offset by time zone.



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01a 06-Apr-2001 Updated author affiliation and contact details.  Udated
                leap-second table.

01b 10-May-2001 Clarified provenance of (non-normative) information in
                appendix A.

02a 11-May-2001 Reference updated email specification (RFC2822).

02b 14-May-2001 Fix up some detailed information concerning leap
                seconds.  Include text describing timestamps for times
                before introduction of UTC.  Caution against the use of
                future timestamps using leap seconds.  Correction to
                day-of-week sample code, and note restriction on
                applicability.  Various editorial corrections.

03a 23-May-2001 Editorial fixes.  Minor clarification of leap seconds.

03b 24-May-2001 More clarification of leap seconds and time zones.

03c 25-May-2001 More minor editorial fixes.

04a 03-Jul-2001 Fix off-by-one error in Netherlands example.

05a 03-Jul-2001 Add note requesting that this appendix be removed on RFC
                publication.  Revised author affiliation.  Add
                boilerplate and reference for RFC2119 language usage.

























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Full copyright statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society 2001.  All Rights Reserved.

   This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
   others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
   or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
   and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
   kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
   included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
   document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
   the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
   Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
   developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
   copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
   followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
   English.

   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
   revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

   This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
   TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
   BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
























Newman & Klyne                                                 [Page 19]


