Bug 7062
| Summary: | mode line clock tracks only forward system time changes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Retired] Red Hat Linux | Reporter: | Joe Harrington <jhmail> |
| Component: | apmd | Assignee: | Ngo Than <than> |
| Status: | CLOSED DUPLICATE | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | low | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | medium | ||
| Version: | 6.2 | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
| Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | 2000-07-11 18:14:46 UTC | Type: | --- |
| Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
| Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
| Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
| oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
| Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
| Embargoed: | |||
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Description
Joe Harrington
1999-11-16 22:56:21 UTC
Thanks for letting me know about this. I'm getting with the emacs package maintainer about this. Time shouldn't go backwards according to Stallman - if so happens, it's a bug in APMD. I'll repeat my comments from bug 7061: Please don't give up so easily. Most other programs handle clock updates just fine. You don't have to base everything exclusively on timers. Putting an update hook into, say, the file-save routine or something else that gets called pretty regularly but not with each keystroke would work fine. All it would have to do is check the clock and test whether it was within a minute of the internal emacs time representation, and update the timers if it isn't. I'm sure there are many more-elegant solutions. Every program that I know of and that has a time display seems to handle this just fine. I'm sure Richard could come up with elegant solutions if he gave it half a thought. Tell him MSword does it better than emacs. In an ideal world, the system time is always increasing. We don't live in one. I can imagine only about half a dozen other ways the time could shift. The user keeps the system clock in local time for compatibility with a dual-boot OS, travels, and changes timezone. A time server on the net has a bug and adjusts the time forward and then back. Someone makes a mistake typing to the date command and subsequently fixes it. Apmd has to do weird machinations to deal with strange BIOSs. I could go on. The point is that if everyone makes just the bare minimalist assumptions, the system falls apart. Right now emacs is doing that. No other program I know does it that way, and for good reason: it doesn't work in the real world. A nod to robustness is required, and it's nearly trivial to add, in this case. I'm sad to see Red Hat diddle its thumbs for 8 months not doing anything, then blame someone else and give up. This would be so simple to fix. Just read the system clock every time a file saves, or 1000 keystrokes happen, or some other semi-regular event occurs. --jh-- If a user swiches timezones, it won't be a problem because the kernel keeps the UTC internally. This should not move backwards - if apmd does that, it's an apmd bug. |