Package net.time4j.scale

package net.time4j.scale

This package handles the UTC timeline (Corrected Universal Time) and other time scales.

Tools for conversion of time scales and calculation of UTC-leapseconds are offered, see the classes TimeScale and LeapSeconds.

Every chronology has its own elements, units and rules but all systems where time points implement the interface UniversalTime have the same common reference to UTC time scale. This way a common storage model for different systems and timezones can be realized such that all local timestamps can finally be stored as UTC (using timezones). If as special case timezone rules possibly change (DST changes) and the timestamps to be stored are in the future then the alternative would be to save all temporal element values including the local time the timezone and the daylight-saving-rule to be applied.

Interface Summary

Interface	Description
LeapSecondEvent	This interface describes that during the last minute of a given calendar day an UTC-leapsecond was either introducted or left out.
LeapSecondProvider	This SPI-interface describes when UTC-leapseconds were introduced.
TickProvider	This SPI-interface describes how nanoseconds since an arbitrary start time are generated.
UniversalTime	Defines a time point respective coordinate on the universal timeline as the count of seconds relative to UTC epoch [1972-01-01T00:00:00Z] in the UTC-timezone (Greenwich meridian) and a nanosecond as part of last second.

Class Summary

Class	Description
LeapSeconds	Holds all leap seconds occurred since the official start of UTC in 1972.

Enum Class Summary

Enum Class	Description
TimeScale	Defines some time scales for usage both in civil life and in science.