Using timezones

I have a script which uses UTC times read from a database. Up until now the users have just provided their current timezone offset from UTC in hours, but this needs to be changed as the script may not be running on a server with UTC set and I'd like to use set_default_timezone(). Looking at the documentation, all of the timezones which I want to provide (Etc/GMT+N, Etc/GMT-N and UTC) are listed as 'only existing for backward compatible reasons'. Is there any reason why UTC should exist only for backward compatible reasons?? It seems like a pretty important timezone to me... What's the best way to go about providing this functionality? Should I just provide an option of all regional timezones (how do I use this? The manual says where to download a pre-compiled Windows DLL but doesn't explain how to use it). Even if I do that how should I obtain UTC time if UTC is a deprecated timezone? Thanks! Rob ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________