September 1997 - tz - lists.iana.org

Java class ADOTimeZone
by John Cowan Sept. 25, 1997

Sept. 25, 1997

I am in the process of implementing a Java 1.1 class called "ADOTimeZone" which provides support for the ADO timezone information. The different zones, compiled on a Unix system, are being included with the Java class as class-specific resources. Currently I have compilable code, but I have not yet begun component testing. When the code works, I will be giving it away freely. I would be interested in hearing from people who want to help improve the currently rather feeble Java 1.1 implementation of time zones. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban

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None
by Devang R. Vaidya Sept. 16, 1997

Sept. 16, 1997

Hello, Does anyone maintain a list of setting for the tz (timezone) parameter for various regions. For the eastern timezone of US, TZ=EST5EDT,4,1,0,3600,10,4,0,7200,3600 is being set. Thanks, Devang

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Re: ISO C strftime() extention for ISO 8601
by kuhn＠cs.purdue.edu Sept. 16, 1997

Sept. 16, 1997

"Clive D.W. Feather" wrote on 1997-06-30 13:14 UTC: > You may be interested to know that WG14 adopted last week working paper > N733, which adds the following items to the strftime() function: > > %f is replaced by the weekday as a decimal number (1-7), where > Monday is 1 (the ISO 8601 weekday number). > %F is equivalent to "%Y-%m-%d" (the ISO 8601 date format). > %T is equivalent to "%H:%M:%S" (the ISO 8601 time format). > %V is replaced by the ISO 8601 week number of the year (weeks > begin on a Monday, and week 1 is the week that includes both > January 4th and the first Thursday of the year) as a decimal > number (00-53). Thanks a lot for forwarding this interesting working paper. Please forward the following comments to the authors of N733 and whoever else might be interested. If possible, I would like to review the final text of the new strftime() definition (will the current draft be on the Web somewhere?). Comments on WG14 proposal N733 ------------------------------ Markus Kuhn <kuhn(a)cs.purdue.edu> -- 1997-06-30 (= 1997-W27-1) I appreciate this proposal and I have the following related comments. a) The valid range for %V numbers is 01-53. There is no week 00 in the ISO 8601 week numbering scheme. The week before a week 01 is either week 52 or week 53 of the previous year. b) %V alone is not sufficient to be able to use the ISO week numbering system. Each week is associated with a year, the year in which the majority of the days of this week fall, and this is not necessarily the year in which all days of the weeks fall. For instance: The week 1999-W52 goes from 1999-12-27 to 2000-01-02, in other words, the day 2000-01-02 has a week notation of the form 1999-W52-7. There should be another format descriptor for the year to which the current ISO week belongs, preferably both in 4-digit (%G) and 2-digit (%g) form. If you implement an algorithm for %V, you'll get the value of %G anyway as a by-product very easily, and therefore it should be made available to the strftime() user. c) Existing practice: The Olson tzcode package <ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/> contains a widely used strftime() implementation that supports already: %u ISO 8601 week day number (1 = Monday, 7=Sunday) %V ISO 8601 week number (01-53) %G ISO 8601 year of current week, 4-digits %g ISO 8601 year of current week, 2-digits Unless there is a good rationale for the characters suggested by N733, I would suggest to stick with %u instead of %f for the weekday number, and I hope that you will add %G and %g as used in the Olson package and Arnold Robbins' strftime version 3.0. Therefore, if I evaluate on 1977-01-02 the string %G-W%V-%u, I should get 1976-W53-7, and on 1975-12-29 I should get 1976-W01-1. Not directly related to N733, but affecting the same part of the standard, I have a number of other suggestions: d) The range for %S and tm_sec is currently defined to be 00-61 to provide for "as many as two leap seconds". This was based on a serious missunderstanding and there can never be two leap seconds per day as it becomes very obvious by reading ITU-R Recommendation TF.460-4 (I can send you a copy if you are interested). Since this 00-61 range is being widely quoted in other standards, this error should be fixed just to stop spreading this serious missconception of how leap seconds work. The correct range is 00-60. This is not an interoperability problem, but fixing this would make WG14 look like they know what they are doing, and it is therefore a good idea. e) I wonder whether %W is anywhere used and whether this field could be dropped to simplify implementation and memory cost. Countries that start the week with Monday normally use ISO 8601 week numbers (%V) and not the scheme defined by %W. I suspect %W was defined based on a missconception of how week numbers work in Europe. Unless anyone can come up with an example where %W is used or needed, I suggest to drop it as it looks completely useless to me (and please don't quote standards that just copied the %W from ISO C). f) In the definition of %y and %Y, the first two digits of a four digit year are refered to as the "century", which is problematic, since the years 1999 and 2000 belong to the 20th century, but 2001 belongs to the 21st century. Suggested better wording: "%y is replaced by the last two digits of the year as a decimal number (00-99)". Again, not a serious interoperability problem, but it makes WG14 look like they know what they are doing. g) mktime() is the inverse function of localtime(), but there exists no portable inverse function for gmtime() that converts a struct tm given in UTC into time_t. This is a serious problem, and the addition of a new function (e.g., mkgmtime() might be a possible name) should be considered seriously. It is not possible to invert gmtime() in a 100% portable way in an application program, and in practice, I have encountered awful hacks like binary searches over the time_t range to invert gmtime() in an as portable as possible way. See <http://www.ft.uni-erlangen.de/~mskuhn/iso-time.html> for further info. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue University, Indiana, USA -- email: kuhn(a)cs.purdue.edu

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by 88847271＠15831.com Sept. 13, 1997

Sept. 13, 1997

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FW: System Time Checker
by Olson, Arthur David Sept. 11, 1997

Sept. 11, 1997

The reference to "major time zones" below is US-centric. --ado ---------- From: Hickey, Michael Sent: Thursday, September 11, 1997 9:44 AM To: TLC-L(a)LIST.NIH.GOV Subject: Re: System Time Checker Please note that these plug-ins were written specifically for Netscape. -----Original Message----- From: Fajman, Roger Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 1997 7:26 PM To: TLC-L(a)LIST.NIH.GOV Subject: System Time Checker Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 08:18:22 -0500 From: Gleason Sackman <gleason(a)rrnet.com> Subject: MISC> US Naval Observatorys new system-time checker Date: Tue, 09 Sep 97 21:52:34 Eastern Daylight Time From: John Tracy McGrath <jack(a)linux.cowland.com> To: gsunet list <gsunet-l(a)ecnet.net> Subject: US Naval Observatorys new system-time checker The US Naval Observatory has augmented their time-reporting service with a neat new service which compares the time being kept on your computer system with USNO time, and reports the deviation. How good are those software plug-in regulators that are supposed to keep your system time on the nose? Maybe you'll be surprised. I was! The whole process is quick and completely automatic, and you can choose from the major time zones. http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/what.html Jack McGrath ------------------------------

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FW: Timezone Discussion List
by Olson, Arthur David Sept. 11, 1997

Sept. 11, 1997

---------- From: Kevin R. Joyce[SMTP:kjoyce@tvdata.com] Sent: Monday, September 08, 1997 10:45 PM To: tz-request(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: Timezone Discussion List Dear Sirs, I would like to receive information regarding North American timezones, specifically "official" abreviations for U.S. and Canadian timzones. Sincerely, Kevin Joyce Online Product Manager TVData

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new time zone code and data files
by ado Sept. 4, 1997

Sept. 4, 1997

The files ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/~pub/tzcode1997g.tar.gz and ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/~pub/tzdata1997h.tar.gz are now available. These files incorporate the corrections for Uruguay (and other locations) that were sent to the time zone mailing list last week; they also incorporate your correspondent's simple-minded fix allowing mktime to both correctly handle leap seconds and correctly handle tm_sec values upon which arithmetic has been performed. (A ponder of Tom Peterson's suggested optimizations to those changes is in my queue.) --ado

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hi
by ado Sept. 4, 1997

Sept. 4, 1997

hi

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For Immediate Release - Deskgate Announces Electronic Envelope
by "Karl Minor"＠moshix2.net Sept. 3, 1997

Sept. 3, 1997

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Re: Montserrat, and FX for France
by Infoman Inc. Sept. 1, 1997

Sept. 1, 1997

With respect to France FR and FX and numeric codes 249 and 250. I believe that the FX has been withdrawn. FX, France Metropolitain I beleive the be used where France was part of the European Union (e.g. for import/export purposes) and distinct from all the territories belonging to France. Check with the secreteriat for ISO 3166, i.e. DIN on this. Further now that we have ISO 3166-2, it would be a godsend if all entities in ISO3166-1 which are not countries in their own right but dependencies of others to be removed from 3166-1 and included in their apprapriate place in 3166-2. Any other thoughts on this - Jake Knoppers

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