Background:
  Hubert requested a pullup of rev 1.26 of date.1, and I wasn't comfortable,
  and this produced a discussion which I felt was better held on
  tech-userlevel, so here we are (Hubert gives permission).

----------------------------
revision 1.26
date: 2000/12/18 07:57:02;  author: hubertf;  state: Exp;  lines: +5 -1
Document /etc/localtime, per PR 8099 by Charles Hannum.
----------------------------

My reply:

| I'm not really comfortable with this.
|   
| /etc/localtime isn't referenced by date(1). date(1) calls
| localtime(3) which happens to use /etc/localtime. It's appropriate
| for localtime(3) talk about it, and it would be appropriate for
| date(1) to reference localtme(3) (which it does not do right
| now). But I do not see why it's right to reference /etc/localtime in
| date(1). Can you explain this to me?

Hubert's response:

/ A user won't know that localtime(3) is involved when he wants to set his
/ timezone. I think that date(1) is the most obvious manpage to look at for
/ such things, and that's why I put the change there.

- And my counter-response:
- 
- We don't simply add things to the Most Obvious manpage that a user
- might look in, if it is the incorrect manpage for it.
- 
- Do you accept my premise that localtime(3) is the proper manpage for
- this, technically speaking? If so, then the first place that needs
- updating is localtime(3).
-  
- I'm troubled by adding something to date(1) just because it Most
- Obvious, but it would seem fine to give some more explanation about
- why it is that localtime(3) is Xr'd. For instance:
- 
-     The handling of time zone information is controlled by
-     .Xr localtime 3 .
- 
- Or perhaps:
- 
-     The handling of time zone information is controlled by
-     .Xr localtime 3
-     as specified by
-     .Xr localtime 5 .
- 
- Digging some more, how does tzfile(5) relate here?


Thoughts?

--jhawk