A warning for FITS y2k implementors

[Don Wells]

An implementor of FITS y2k code told me:

  "..there was one sort of amusing problem with the initial
  implementation that other systems might run into. By default with the
  new-style we include the time. But because of floating point rounding,
  the new style date would turn into previous_day:T23:59:59.99 or
  whatever. While this is fine for systems that read the time part of
  the new format, it would presumably cause systems that ignore the time
  part to think the date was a day earlier than it actually was.."

-Don [Chair, IAU FITS Working Group]
-- 
  Donald C. Wells         Associate Scientist         dwells at nrao.edu
                    http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
  National Radio Astronomy Observatory                +1-804-296-0277
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