[issue9305] Don't use east/west of UTC in date/time documentation

[Alexander Belopolsky]

Alexander Belopolsky <belopolsky at users.sourceforge.net> added the comment:

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 10:46 AM, anatoly techtonik
<report at bugs.python.org> wrote:
> .. Another
> concern - if UTC is 0 reference point then there is no reason to add
> something to it - you just can say - "Return timedelta equal to local
> UTC offset."

No, UTC is not a 0 reference point, it is a time scale.  UTC offset is
the value that is used to translate between time expressed in UTC and
local time.   To make an analogy, expressing time in UTC is like
expressing temperature in Kelvin scale.  You need to subtract 273 from
the value in ºK to arrive at the value in ºC.

Documenting utcoffset() as "Return timedelta equal to local UTC
offset." is almost circular.  It does not explain whether it has to be
added or subtracted from UTC to arrive at local time.

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