A new version of the Time2 Library is available at http://time2.sourceforge.net/ and http://agent.ch/timeseries/t2/.
This new release brings improved support for the representation of dates and times as defined by the ISO 8601:2004 standard. Basic and extended date and time strings are allowed. In the extended format, the current time, as I'm writing, is represented as 2011-10-10T12:42:53Z. The Z indicates UTC time. The same time in the basic format is written 20111010T124253Z. Because time zones and daylight savings time are irrelevant in the Time2 Library, the Z letter can be omitted.
When using the extended format, the T separating date and time can be replaced with a blank. So the example can also be represented as 2011-10-10 12:42:53, arguably nicer on the eye. This more natural format is used by Time2.toString().
Local times can be specified using a time zone offset. For example, I am writing this from Switzerland, where the time zone is CEST, 2 hours ahead of UTC. In the ISO 8601:2004 standard, this can be written 2011-10-10T14:42:53-02.
There are some exotic features in the ISO 8601 standard. Some of them, like leap seconds or the use of hour 24 for midnight, are supported. Others, like week dates and ordinal dates are not.
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