NAME

DateTime::Format::IBeat - Format times in .beat notation

DESCRIPTION

    No Time Zones
    
    No Geographical Borders
    
    How long is a Swatch .beat? In short, we have divided up the virtual and
    real day into 1000 I<beats>. One Swatch beat is the equivalent of 1
    minute 26.4 seconds. That means that 12 noon in the old time system is
    the equivalent of @500 Swatch .beats.
    
    Okay, so how can a surfer in New York, or a passenger on a transatlantic
    flight know when it is @500 Swatch .beats in Central Europe for example?
    How can the New York surfer make a date for a chat with his cyber friend
    in Rome? Easy, Internet Time is the same all over the world.

    How is this possible? We are not just creating a new way of measuring
    time, we are also creating a new meridian in Biel, Switzerland, home of
    Swatch.

    Biel MeanTime (BMT) is the universal reference for Internet Time. A day
    in Internet Time begins at midnight BMT (@000 Swatch .beats) (Central
    European Wintertime). The meridian is marked for all to see on the
    facade of the Swatch International Headquarters on Jakob-Staempfli
    Street, Biel, Switzerland. So, it is the same time all over the world,
    be it night or day, the era of time zones has disappeared.

    The BMT meridian was inaugurated on 23 October 1998 in the presence of
    Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute
    of Technology`s Media Laboratory.

    - http://www.swatch.com/itime_tools/itime.php

PARSING METHODS

parse_time

Parses a .beat time and returns a DateTime object. The object uses the current date for its date and will have UTC set as its timezone. Feel free to use 'set' to convert to your local time.

    my $first = DateTime::Format::IBeat->parse_time( '@765' );
    print $first->datetime; # 2003-04-01T17:21:36

    $first->set_time_zone( "Australia/Sydney" );
    print $first->datetime; # 2003-04-02T03:21:36

Note that the leading @ is optional. Also, if using direct strings, and leading @s, be careful to not have it interpolate it as an array by accident.

parse_date

Parses an .beat date and returns a "DateTime" object representing that date.

     my $dt = DateTime::Format::IBeat->parse_date('@d01.04.03');
     print $dt->ymd('.'); # "2003.04.01"

Note: this assumes the number of .beats elapsed in the day to be 0, thus it will appear to be returning the day before. If you display a full time with it, you will find it's at UTC rather than BMT (+0100), thus 11pm the day before. The important thing to remember is that it is an accurate conversion to the usual notation, despite appearances.

parse_datetime

Parses an ibeat datetime string and returns a "DateTime" object representing that datetime.

    my $dt = DateTime::Format::IBeat->parse_datetime(
        '@d01.04.03 @765');
    print $dt->datetime; # "2003-04-01T17:21:36"

FORMATTING METHODS

format_time

Given a DateTime object, returns a string representating that time in ibeats.

format_date

Given a DateTime object, returns a string representating that date.

format_datetime

Given a Datetime object, returns a string representating that date and time in .beats format.

THANKS

The original author of this module was Iain Truskett (SPOON). Since his tragically early death, the module has been maintained by Earle Martin (EMARTIN), who would like to dedicate it to his memory.

Iain wished to thank:

Dave Rolsky (DROLSKY) for kickstarting the DateTime project.
Swatch, for coming up with this mad format.
Jerub, from opn, who wrote the python original, from which I retain no code. D'oh.

Here is a list of people and their CPAN id, extracted from various places. These people have either submitted patches or suggestions, or their bug reports or comments have inspired the appropriate patches. Corrections, additions, deletions welcome:

•: Dave Rolsky (DROLSKY)

SUPPORT

You can log bug reports via the CPAN RT system on the web:

    http://rt.cpan.org/

This makes it much easier for me to track things and thus means your problem is less likely to be neglected.

LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

The full text of the licences can be found in the Artistic and COPYING files included with this module.

AUTHOR

The late Iain Truskett (SPOON) created this module. It is currently maintained by Earle Martin (EMARTIN), who would like to dedicate it to his memory.