On Feb 4, 2009, at 9:48 AM, Michelle Steiner wrote: On Feb 4, 2009, at 8:32 AM, Luther Fuller wrote: Now, back to the original problem: Do dates stored in Numbers follow this standard?
Numbers apparently treats the displayed time in a cell as being GMT, but reports it to Applescript as local time. When changing the time zone in System Preferences, the date/time displayed in Numbers does not change, but the date/time it reports to Applescript does change. and: Do dates stored in iCal follow this standard?
Michelle's remarks about dates in iCal point out something important. Dates in iCal are associated with an event, which in turn may be associated with a place, which is associated with a time zone. You can store the date time information as UTC, but you must also store the time zone info for the place of the event. When iCal displays this info, it should display it in local time. No, not your current local time, but the local time for the event. Imagine traveling with a laptop while attending meetings in different cities. If the displayed time is not for the time zone of the place of the event, you will become very confused.
There need to be standards for the storage and display of date-time, but ISO 8601 alone isn't enough. iCal's dates and Numbers dates may follow variant standards for a good reason.
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