Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Patch adding option to display time as seconds(and fractions) since epoch

[Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx>]

Stephen Fisher wrote:
> Thanks Ulf, Guy and Jaap for your feedback.  I changed my local code to 
> show this based on the suggestions:
>
>   Seconds Since Epoch (1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC): 1234567890.123456
>
> I am hesistant to put "Unix Epoch" because time_t on Windows has the 
> same epoch and it takes up more space if we're including the date and 
> time of epoch.
>
> The menu doesn't look too bad being that wide.  Should we go with this 
> format?
>   

As a trade off between "understandability and lengthiness" I've changed 
it to: "Seconds Since Epoch (1970-01-01):   1234567890.123456"

My thoughts on this:

- "unix epoch": although the term "epoch" is unix based it's not limited 
to unix in this regard
- "epoch": I think it's a good idea to keep the epoch keyword for ML 
discussions and alike - not only for the internal code reasons mentioned 
before
- "1970-01-01": Adding this makes it clear what epoch means in this 
regard (the technical oriented audience of WS will have heard this date 
before I guess)
- "00:00:00 UTC": won't add any real additional information beside the 
time that a user will already expect (should be described in the User's 
Guide)
- "00:00:00 UTC": makes the visual appearance of the menu hard and 
slower to read

If anyone can live with this compromise, I'll add a more detailed 
description to the User's Guide (e.g. mentioning "00:00:00 UTC").

It would be helpful for me if someone could provide a short description 
of the benefits and drawbacks of this format.

Regards, ULFL