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Bern is the Capital of Switzerland
by Didier CLERC June 1, 2006

June 1, 2006

Hello, Why is the timezone for Switzerland Europe/Zurich and not Europe/Bern ? Bern is the Capitale of Switzerland. Considering Zurich to be the capitale of Switzerland is an offense to most of the Swiss. Thank you for your answer, Didier CLERC

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RE: Possible TZ Data Errors with every 1st / 2nd / 3rd Xday of the month
by Andy Lipscomb June 1, 2006

June 1, 2006

No, in that case at least, the data is correct. The second Saturday of a month can be between the 8th and the 14th, inclusive; this year, the second Saturday of October is the 14th. Since the changeover occurs at 24:00 on that Saturday and Unix doesn't like 24:00, it is coded as 0:00 the following day, which is the 15th this year, and in general can run from the 9th to the 15th. Thus, Sun>=9 is correct. (This is not the "second Sunday," but the "Sunday after the second Saturday." USA readers will see the resemblance to Election Day.) ________________________________ From: Dr Hingston [mailto:dr.hingston@paradise.net.nz] Sent: Wed 31 May 2006 04:31 To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Possible TZ Data Errors with every 1st / 2nd / 3rd Xday of the month Dear List Members Woops, seems I got the address wrong, my apologies! I hope this is better! Regarding: Rule Chile 1999 max - Oct Sun>=9 4:00u 1:00 S Rule Chile 2000 max - Mar Sun>=9 3:00u 0 - The expression Sun>=9 from the above rules would appear to me to be incorrect, as it suggests the third Sunday in some years. e.g. October this year. Summary: Supreme Decree Number 1,489 (6 October 1970) - This law, enacted during the presidency of Eduardo Frei Montalva, declared that Daylight Saving Time will advance clocks by one hour, beginning the second Saturday of October, and ending the second Saturday of March. Chilean time is administered by the Chilean Navy's Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOA). On discussion with the Chilean Consulate the above is confirmed, and time for changeover is midnight Saturday (I take to mean 00:00 Sunday)

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Possible TZ Data Errors with every 1st / 2nd / 3rd Xday of the month
by Dr Hingston May 31, 2006

May 31, 2006

Dear List Members Woops, seems I got the address wrong, my apologies! I hope this is better! Regarding: Rule Chile 1999 max - Oct Sun>=9 4:00u 1:00 S Rule Chile 2000 max - Mar Sun>=9 3:00u 0 - The expression Sun>=9 from the above rules would appear to me to be incorrect, as it suggests the third Sunday in some years. e.g. October this year. References: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.ht (!) which lists: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/chile.html Summary: Supreme Decree Number 1,489 (6 October 1970) - This law, enacted during the presidency of Eduardo Frei Montalva, declared that Daylight Saving Time will advance clocks by one hour, beginning the second Saturday of October, and ending the second Saturday of March. Chilean time is administered by the Chilean Navy's Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOA). On discussion with the Chilean Consulate the above is confirmed, and time for changeover is midnight Saturday (I take to mean 00:00 Sunday) It would seem to be correct, to me, if it were stated as Sun>=8. Similarly, if I am correct, then there are quite a number of other instances in the database where the expression Sun>=9 perhaps might be more correctly stated as Sun>=8? Extrapolating further, if I may, some of the other instances may also be incorrect, e.g. Sun>=16 etc. Some examples: Rule ChileAQ 1966 1997 - Oct Sun>=9 0:00 1:00 S Rule Belize 1919 1943 - Feb Sun>=9 0:00 0 S Rule Falk 1985 2000 - Sep Sun>=9 0:00 1:00 S Rule Falk 1986 2000 - Apr Sun>=16 0:00 0 - Rule GB-Eire 1945 1946 - Oct Sun>=2 2:00s 0 GMT Rule GB-Eire 1946 only - Apr Sun>=9 2:00s 1:00 BST Where a week day is stipulated as the Xth day of the month then I believe the correct references should be >=1, >=8, >= 15, >= 22 etc. Therefore I question other numbers, of course they may be correct, however this does seem to suggest careful scrutiny of those numbers is indicated. I'd be grateful for list consideration and comment please. Kind regards David Hingston

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Tzcode2006g.tar.gz and tzdata2006g.tar.gz
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] May 31, 2006

May 31, 2006

The files... ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzcode2006g.tar.gz ...and... ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2006g.tar.gz ...are now available; these reflect the northamerica changes circulated last week on the time zone mailing list by Paul Eggert. --ado

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FW: Corrections to latitudes/longitudes in zone.tab
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] May 31, 2006

May 31, 2006

Andy McDonald is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Andy McDonald [mailto:andy@stemhaus.com] Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:28 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Corrections to latitudes/longitudes in zone.tab Hi, A very very minor point, but I've run across a few inaccurate latitudes/longitudes in tz's zone.tab (2006g and earlier): Corrected lat/long zone.tab lat/long America/Argentina/Tucuman: -0265000, -0651300 -0312400, -0641100 America/Inuvik: +0682200, -1334400 +0682500, -1133000 America/Rainy_River: +0484300, -0943400 +0484300, -0942900 America/Rankin_Inlet +0624800, -0920500 +0624500, -0921000 America/Scoresbysund: +0703000, -0215800 +0703000, -0221500 (Tucuman's latitude and longitude in zone.tab are those of America/Argentina/Cordoba.) The corrected values come from playing with my Firefox extension (http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/) and Google Earth, and are of course entirely subjective. Regards, Andy McDonald

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Manpage License question
by Martin Schulze May 30, 2006

May 30, 2006

Hi, the man-pages package for GNU/Linux has incorporated some of the tz manpages that are also distributed in tzcode$year.tar.gz, namely zic.8, zdump.8 and tzselect.8. They lack a copyright notice and a license statement. The tzcode2006g.tar.gz lacks this information as well. What license are these pages distributed under? I assume it's the BSD license, but I'd better ask. Please keep Michael Kerrisk copied who is the current man-pages maintainer, I'm just the Debian downstream. Thanks and kind regards, Joey -- Never trust an operating system you don't have source for!

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Another Windows program that uses the TZ database
by ActiveEarth Sales May 26, 2006

May 26, 2006

Dear tz Contributors, My world time clock software, ActiveEarth, also uses the tz database. Would you add a mention of that to your web page? You can see the software here: http://www.activeearth.com <http://www.activeearth.com/> . There is a new release about to come out that will contain the latest tz data. Thank you so much for this excellent resource! Best regards, Thaine Norris President Norris Family Industry

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new ISO 3166-1 entries
by Chuck Soper May 25, 2006

May 25, 2006

I recently read ISO 3166-1 Newsletter No. V-11 (2006-03-29) and noticed three new ISO 3166-1 entries: GUERNSEY; GG ISLE OF MAN;IM JERSEY;JE I found this rule in the Theory file: Include at least one location per time zone rule set per country. One such location is enough. Use ISO 3166 (see the file iso3166.tab) to help decide whether something is a country. However, uninhabited ISO 3166 regions like Bouvet Island do not need locations, since local time is not defined there. For tzdata, should all populated ISO 3166 regions be included? Does this mean that three new TZ zone descriptions should be added to zone.tab and appropriate data files? Or, should Europe/London be used instead? Should iso3166.tab be updated? Chuck

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C#/.NET tz binary reader ...
by Zbigniew Babiej May 24, 2006

May 24, 2006

Dear Sir or Madam, Recently I have posted the C#/.NET version of tz binary reader at http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=0 C9E8F33-7214-4222-B992-D248D107652F I thought that it would be good idea to share this link on your page as well.... Best Regards, Z. Babiej, MarketXS ______________________________ DISCLAIMER: This e-mail message is intended for the addressee(s) or authorized recipient only. If you are not the addressee, or an authorized recipient, you are specifically advised that any use, distribution, publication, copying or repetition of this information is prohibited. If you have received this information in error, please notify us immediately (+31 (0)20 50 25 800) and destroy this message.

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RE: tz list searchable on Google
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] May 23, 2006

May 23, 2006

I'm also worried about spam; that's why electronic mail addresses have been purged from the time zone distribution (and most especially from the source data files such as "northamerica" which end up on millions of computers worldwide). The gmane site's archive of stuff that's gone out on the time zone mailing list extends back to July 2004; has tz-linked spam been seen since then? And...if the gmane mailing list archive is a bad thing, is the elsie ftpable mailing list archive also a bad thing (or is security through difficulty of use sufficient)? --ado

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FW: timezones offset from what?
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] May 23, 2006

May 23, 2006

Zefram is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Zefram [mailto:zefram@fysh.org] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 12:30 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: timezones offset from what? I've been doing work on precision timekeeping on computer systems. Naturally I don't use timezones at all inside that code, but there are places where I need to apply timezones when presenting a time to non-specialist humans. Looking through the zoneinfo database and the theory written about it, it struck me that although it deals fantastically with what time offset to use, there's no rigorous treatment of what base time scale to apply the offset to. Then it struck me that a simple treatment of this could solve a couple of other issues with the database. An example of this issue: as the zoneinfo source notes, UK legal time is currently based on mean solar time on the Greenwich meridian. Now that's not even Universal Time any more, since the prime meridian moved (slightly) off the Greenwich meridian. But everyone in the UK in practice sets their clocks based on UTC, as promulgated by the NPL and the BBC. At centisecond timescales, GMT (legal time in the UK), UTC (used in practice), UT1 (which UTC tracks in the long term), and UT2 (used for civil time in the 1950s) are all quite distinct. So I have a suggestion: it would be nice if the zoneinfo database included a field identifying exactly which time scale to apply the offsets to. The database doesn't need to understand how the time scales relate to each other; leave that to the precision horologists. All it needs is a short text string, with values such as "UTC", "UT1", "GMT". Of course, in a lot of cases this information is unavailable, or the distinction wasn't being made, so you'd then give "UT" to be explicitly ambiguous about the exact flavour of Universal Time. This field would also allow the database to handle timezones that are based on something other than UT. Currently the data files for Saudi Arabia attempt to describe apparent solar time in terms of UT, by means of a daily offset change. But it could instead be specified as a fixed offset with a base of apparent solar time on the prime meridian. To understand the zone properly the code would need to calculate the equation of time, but that only needs to be implemented once and it would give a much smoother and more accurate result than the daily UT offset changes do. A system that doesn't do the equation of time would effectively fall back to mean solar time, which is what the Riyadh8X zones do anyway. It's also a way to handle Mars time. Just specify the base to be MTC instead of UT. Ta da. What do you think? -zefram

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Corrections to latitudes/longitudes in zone.tab
by Andy McDonald May 23, 2006

May 23, 2006

Hi, A very very minor point, but I've run across a few inaccurate latitudes/longitudes in tz's zone.tab (2006g and earlier): Corrected lat/long zone.tab lat/long America/Argentina/Tucuman: -0265000, -0651300 -0312400, -0641100 America/Inuvik: +0682200, -1334400 +0682500, -1133000 America/Rainy_River: +0484300, -0943400 +0484300, -0942900 America/Rankin_Inlet +0624800, -0920500 +0624500, -0921000 America/Scoresbysund: +0703000, -0215800 +0703000, -0221500 (Tucuman's latitude and longitude in zone.tab are those of America/Argentina/Cordoba.) The corrected values come from playing with my Firefox extension (http://www.stemhaus.com/firefox/foxclocks/) and Google Earth, and are of course entirely subjective. Regards, Andy McDonald

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timezones offset from what?
by Zefram May 19, 2006

May 19, 2006

I've been doing work on precision timekeeping on computer systems. Naturally I don't use timezones at all inside that code, but there are places where I need to apply timezones when presenting a time to non-specialist humans. Looking through the zoneinfo database and the theory written about it, it struck me that although it deals fantastically with what time offset to use, there's no rigorous treatment of what base time scale to apply the offset to. Then it struck me that a simple treatment of this could solve a couple of other issues with the database. An example of this issue: as the zoneinfo source notes, UK legal time is currently based on mean solar time on the Greenwich meridian. Now that's not even Universal Time any more, since the prime meridian moved (slightly) off the Greenwich meridian. But everyone in the UK in practice sets their clocks based on UTC, as promulgated by the NPL and the BBC. At centisecond timescales, GMT (legal time in the UK), UTC (used in practice), UT1 (which UTC tracks in the long term), and UT2 (used for civil time in the 1950s) are all quite distinct. So I have a suggestion: it would be nice if the zoneinfo database included a field identifying exactly which time scale to apply the offsets to. The database doesn't need to understand how the time scales relate to each other; leave that to the precision horologists. All it needs is a short text string, with values such as "UTC", "UT1", "GMT". Of course, in a lot of cases this information is unavailable, or the distinction wasn't being made, so you'd then give "UT" to be explicitly ambiguous about the exact flavour of Universal Time. This field would also allow the database to handle timezones that are based on something other than UT. Currently the data files for Saudi Arabia attempt to describe apparent solar time in terms of UT, by means of a daily offset change. But it could instead be specified as a fixed offset with a base of apparent solar time on the prime meridian. To understand the zone properly the code would need to calculate the equation of time, but that only needs to be implemented once and it would give a much smoother and more accurate result than the daily UT offset changes do. A system that doesn't do the equation of time would effectively fall back to mean solar time, which is what the Riyadh8X zones do anyway. It's also a way to handle Mars time. Just specify the base to be MTC instead of UT. Ta da. What do you think? -zefram

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Correction
by Behdad Elahipanah May 17, 2006

May 17, 2006

Tehran's (Iran) current UTC/GMT Offset is: +3:30 hours with no daylight saving time at the moment Please correct it in your database.

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Kirov on GMT+4?
by Jesper Norgaard Welen May 16, 2006

May 16, 2006

The Kirov timezone according to the tz database is GMT+3. As you will remember in an earlier mail I could not find any mention of the timezone directly in the page of the Kirovskaya oblast' in http://www.gov-vyatka.ru/ however this page pointed to another page http://www.gismeteo.ru/weather/towns/27196.htm that has sunrise and sunset times indicating that Kirov is on GMT+3. Now I have found a page that points to this same page, but explicitly defines Kirov as being on GMT+4: >From main page http://map.rin.ru selecting Kirovskaya obl. http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main.pl?Region=kirov you can see just below the link to the www.gismeteo.ru link that it specifies explicitly GMT+4 The other links confirm what we think for other oblast's in the area: Samarskaya oblast' on GMT+4: http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main.pl?Region=samara Udmurtskaya oblast' on GMT+4: http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main.pl?Region=udmurt Volgogradskaya oblast' on GMT+3: http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main.pl?Region=volga Astrakhanskaya oblast' on GMT+3: http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main.pl?Region=astrah Saratovskaya oblast' on GMT+3: http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main.pl?Region=saratov Komi republic on GMT+3: http://map.rin.ru/cgi-bin/main.pl?Region=komi This page has a summary of time differences from Moscow time, and shows Kirov as being on Moscow time, e.g. GMT+3: http://www.bereg.ru/sprav_info/inform/time.shtml As we know from an earlier email from Paul Eggert, Shanks & Pottenger (2003) has Kirov on GMT+4. I'm afraid Kirov is a difficult case. I have changed it myself in World Time Explorer 4 times from between GMT+4 and GMT+3: February 23, 2000 GMT+4 to GMT+3 January 21, 2001 GMT+3 to GMT+4 June 18, 2001 GMT+4 to GMT+3 October 2, 2002 GMT+3 to GMT+4 Each time I was convinced I had found a better source. So who are we to believe? We have still not found any official russian page that gives the GMT offset explicitly. - Jesper Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (55) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (55) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/index.html

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FW: Finnish summer time (DST) rule
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] May 15, 2006

May 15, 2006

Jukka A. Ukkonen is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Jukka A. Ukkonen [mailto:jau@iki.fi] Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 1:57 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Finnish summer time (DST) rule Greetings from Kirkkonummi (32km from Helsinki), The correct DST rule (in POSIX TZ syntax) for Finland has been at least since 2002 EET-02:00EEST-03:00,M3.5.0/03:00,M10.5.0/04:00 Notice that in there the zone change times are represented in the local time of the zone which is current at the moment when the change shall take place - i.e. both local times actually refer to 01:00 GMT. I guess Finland used this rule already several years before the common EU directive officially harmonized the DST rules all around EU from 2002 onwards. The EU directive can be found here... http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2001/l_031/l_03120010202en002 10022.pdf I will let you know, if I find more precise info about when Finland actually adopted the current DST rule. Cheers, // jau .--- ..- -.- -.- .- .- .-.-.- ..- -.- -.- --- -. . -. / Jukka A. Ukkonen, Oxit Ltd, Finland /__ M.Sc. (sw-eng & cs) (Phone) +358-500-606-671 / Internet: Jukka.Ukkonen(a)Oxit.Fi (Home) +358-9-6215-280 / Internet: jau(a)iki.fi v .--- .- ..- ...-.- .. -.- .. .-.-.- ..-. .. + + + + My opinions are mine and mine alone, not my employers. + + + +

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Finnish summer time (DST) rule
by jau＠iki.fi May 12, 2006

May 12, 2006

Greetings from Kirkkonummi (32km from Helsinki), The correct DST rule (in POSIX TZ syntax) for Finland has been at least since 2002 EET-02:00EEST-03:00,M3.5.0/03:00,M10.5.0/04:00 Notice that in there the zone change times are represented in the local time of the zone which is current at the moment when the change shall take place - i.e. both local times actually refer to 01:00 GMT. I guess Finland used this rule already several years before the common EU directive officially harmonized the DST rules all around EU from 2002 onwards. The EU directive can be found here... http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2001/l_031/l_03120010202en002100… I will let you know, if I find more precise info about when Finland actually adopted the current DST rule. Cheers, // jau .--- ..- -.- -.- .- .- .-.-.- ..- -.- -.- --- -. . -. / Jukka A. Ukkonen, Oxit Ltd, Finland /__ M.Sc. (sw-eng & cs) (Phone) +358-500-606-671 / Internet: Jukka.Ukkonen(a)Oxit.Fi (Home) +358-9-6215-280 / Internet: jau(a)iki.fi v .--- .- ..- ...-.- .. -.- .. .-.-.- ..-. .. + + + + My opinions are mine and mine alone, not my employers. + + + +

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Russia +4 breakout oblasts
by Jesper Norgaard Welen May 10, 2006

May 10, 2006

Oscar van Vlijmen made (as far as I understand) a thourough investigation of the Russian timezones in 2001-08-25 which documented all the oblasts that the russian timezones covers, listing the oblast's that correspond to each timezone. There are many english-speaking sites that to this day disagree with specific cities (stating that Kirov is on GMT+4 and similar), but after checking some russian sites I have come to the conclusion that the highly appreciated work of Oscar is still corresponding to current time in those places. However, all of the russian timezones in the tz database are declared as having been unaltered since 1991-1993 (this differs a bit from one russian timezone to the other), and especially the Europe/Samara timezone is unchanged since 1991 Oct 20 3:00. The following maps show the oblast' Kirovskaya, Saratovskaya, Volgogradskaya and Astrakhanskaya to be on GMT+4 as well: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/reference_maps/pdf/time_zones. pdf http://www.statoids.com/tru.html http://www.manifold.net/download/freemaps.html http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world_maps/time_zone_world_98.jpg This is also true for a recent (1995+) ESRI map of timezones I have seen. The above links are all taken directly or indirectly from http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm Oscar is correct that since 2001 these were no longer on GMT+4 but had returned to GMT+3, but this return we have not documented with one or several timezones. I am not aware when these changes happened, but any guess would be better than the current state, where these four oblast' are on Moscow time since 1880, which is hardly likely to be true, if so many map makers have insisted on that they were on GMT+4 or even GMT+5. Regards, - Jesper Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (55) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (55) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/index.html

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Bermuda will adopt US rules next year
by Paul Eggert May 8, 2006

May 8, 2006

In today's Royal Gazette, Stuart Roberts reports that Bermuda will fall into line with the US daylight-saving rules next year; see <http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060506/NEWS/105…>. Currently the tz tables take advantage of the fact that Bermuda and the Bahamas use the same DST rules, and have done so since 1974. My guess is that the Bahamas will fall into line as well, but I have no info about this, so perhaps it's better to play it safe for now and split these rules. There's no rush on this, since the new Bermuda rules don't affect time stamps until March 2007. Besides the Bahamas, other countries to watch on this front include Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, and Turks and Caicos.

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DST in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua
by Jesper Norgaard Welen May 6, 2006

May 6, 2006

There is a flood of mutually conflicting stories on the near past/future DST changes in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Here is a small bouquet of articles to consider, not that I will pretend to judge which are true or false: Change of DST in Honduras: http://ar.news.yahoo.com/060503/4/qmx7.html expected for this Sunday 7 at 0:00 Change of DST perhaps postponed in El Salvador: http://www.laprensagrafica.com/lodeldia/883.asp ... it has the interesting claim that Honduras changed the same time as Guatemala and Nicaragua. Change of DST in Guatemala: http://www.deguate.com/cgi-bin/noticias/print.pl?article=7134 claims that the return of DST will happen the 30.th. of September at 24 hours, or really 1.st. of October at 0:00. Another confirmation that Nicaragua change was at 2:00 in the morning: http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2006/05/01/nacionales/18410: Por orden del presidente de la República, Enrique Bolaños, Nicaragua adelantó en sesenta minutos su hora oficial, ayer a las dos de la mañana, y así permanecerá hasta el 30 de septiembre. This means the following (my informal translation) By order of the president of the republic, Enrique Bolaños, Nicaragua advanced by sixty minutes their official time, yesterday at 2 in the morning, and will stay that way until 30.th. of september. Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (55) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (55) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/index.html

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Honduras and El Salvador on DST too?
by Oscar van Vlijmen May 5, 2006

May 5, 2006

Reportedly (wordltimezone.com, some Spanish media) Honduras chose to follow Guatemala and will observe DST starting "la medianoche del sábado", so probably Saturday 06 May 2006, 24:00 local time. No ending date is mentioned other than "durante cuatro meses hasta septiembre" (during 4 months until September). My theory is: DST ends Saturday 02 September 2006 24:00 local time. El Salvador will follow Honduras. No serious details, no serious sources were given. I couldn't find any more reliable sources yet. Does anybody know more of this?

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Tzcode2006f.tar.gz and tzdata2006f.tar.gz
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] May 1, 2006

May 1, 2006

The files... ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzcode2006f.tar.gz ...and... ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2006f.tar.gz ...are now available; a missing version number problem is fixed (with thanks to Bradley White for catching the problem). --ado

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Tzcode2006e.tar.gz and tzdata2006e.tar.gz
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] May 1, 2006

May 1, 2006

The files... ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzcode2006e.tar.gz ...and... ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2006e.tar.gz ...are now available. These reflect the changes circulated on the time zone mailing list last week by Paul Eggert; I've also added new items to tz-arts.htm that were found by Paul. --ado

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RE: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Paul Schauble May 1, 2006

May 1, 2006

I agree with the drawbacks of using the most populated city as a proxy for a time zone. In this case, what's wrong with calling the tz zone Asia/China and being done with it? ++PLS -----Original Message----- From: tz-request(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov [mailto:tz-request@elsie.nci.nih.gov] On Behalf Of Zhe Su Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2006 7:06 AM To: Paul Eggert Cc: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info. Hi, And in my opinion, using the rule of using most populous location to identify each region is not a generic way for every countries. IMO, we should use different rules for different countries to fit their local circumstances. For China (or more exactly, PRC), it's apparently not suitable to use the population rule. Because the most populous location in China is Chongqing, which is belong to Sichuan province, the most populous province of China. But Chongqing is far less developed than Shanghai and Beijing, so it's far less popular than Beijing and Shanghai. So for China, I'd prefer to use the most important and popular location, Beijing, the capital of China to identify our unique timezone. Regards James Su On 4/29/06, Zhe Su <james.su(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > I still can't agree with you. It's harmless to add "Asia/Beijing". > And China now uses only one timezone, which is called officially > "China Standard Time" and indeed it's known as Beijing Time. > Now we have five timezones for China in asia/zone.tab: > "Asia/Shanghai", "Asia/Chongqing", "Asia/Urumqi", "Asia/Harbin", > "Asia/Kashgar". But they are known as historic timezones (according to > comments in asia file). After 1949, the establishing of People's > Republic of China, we uses only one timezone, which is called "Beijing > Time" or "China Standard Time" officially. > So if you think we should choose a most populous city of China to > represent the only one "China Standard Time", that is Chongqing rather > than Shanghai, because Chongqing has more than 27 million population. > But, I still think using "Asia/Beijing" to represent the only timezone > used in Peoples Republic of China is the most reasonable way. > > Regards > James Su > > On 4/29/06, Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> wrote: > > "Zhe Su" <james.su(a)gmail.com> writes: > > > > > So, is it ok to just add "Asia/Beijing" into the database along with > > > "Asia/Shanghai"? So that people can choose whatever they want. > > > > For now I'd rather not do that, for the reasons already mentioned. > > >

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Paul Eggert April 29, 2006

April 29, 2006

Ken Pizzini <tz.(a)explicate.org> writes: > the populations do seem to have converged significantly over the 15 > or so years since the Asia/Shanghai entry was created, and the trend > lines strongly suggest that if Beijing has not yet overtaken > Shanghai as the largest city in China, it is very likely to do so > soon. That depends on whose estimates one uses, and what one means by "soon". If we take estimates recently published by Chinese news agencies for the end of 2005, for example, Shanghai had 17.78 million people with a 2.030% annual growth rate since 2000 <http://english.sina.com/china/1/2006/0406/72038.html>, whereas Beijing had 15.36 million people with a 2.135% annual growth rate in the same period <http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/20/content_4451085.htm>, so at current rates it will take about 142 years for Beijing's population to surpass Shanghai, at which point both cities will have populations of about 309 million people. To put it mildly, I don't have a lot of faith in these estimates, but until this thing settles out with a clear winner there's no rush. There is an advantage of keeping the Zone names stable, which our other correspondents have reminded us of periodically. I'd rather not get into the business of discussing zone names changes based on guesswork forecasts of population growth. (It's hard enough just keeping track of the clocks. :-)

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