Rewrote various pieces, and added some details.

man3/ftime.3

@@ -26,8 +26,9 @@
 .\"
 .\" Modified Sat Jul 24 14:23:14 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
 .\" Modified Sun Oct 18 17:31:43 1998 by Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)
+.\" 2008-06-23, mtk, minor rewrites, added some details
 .\"
-.TH FTIME 3 2001-12-14 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
+.TH FTIME 3 2008-06-23 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
 .SH NAME
 ftime \- return date and time
 .SH SYNOPSIS
@@ -35,7 +36,9 @@ ftime \- return date and time
 .sp
 .BI "int ftime(struct timeb *" tp );
 .SH DESCRIPTION
-Return current date and time in
+This function returns the current time, in seconds and milliseconds
+since the Epoch (00:00:00 UTC), 1 January 1970).
+The time is returned in
 .IR tp ,
 which is declared as follows:
 .sp
@@ -51,16 +54,20 @@ struct timeb {
 .in
 .LP
 Here \fItime\fP is the number of seconds since the Epoch,
-\fImillitm\fP is the number of milliseconds since \fItime\fP
-seconds since the Epoch, \fItimezone\fP is the local time zone
-measured in minutes of time west of Greenwich, and \fIdstflag\fP
+and \fImillitm\fP is the number of milliseconds since \fItime\fP
+seconds since the Epoch.
+The \fItimezone\fP field is the local time zone measured in minutes
+of time west of Greenwich (with a negative value indicating minutes
+east of Greenwich).
+The \fIdstflag\fP field
 is a flag that, if non-zero, indicates that Daylight Saving time
 applies locally during the appropriate part of the year.
 .LP
-These days the contents of the \fItimezone\fP and \fIdstflag\fP
-fields are undefined.
+POSIX.1-2001 says that the contents of the \fItimezone\fP and \fIdstflag\fP
+fields are unspecified; avoid relying on them.
 .SH "RETURN VALUE"
 This function always returns 0.
+(POSIX.1-2001 specifies, and some systems document, a \-1 error return.)
 .SH "CONFORMING TO"
 4.2BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
 .\" FIXME . Mar 08: The next POSIX.1 revision removes ftime().