February 2000 - tz - lists.iana.org

Reference for tz?
by Joseph S. Myers Feb. 5, 2000

Feb. 5, 2000

The recent appearence of a new way to refer to the tz database - `government database' - caused me to wonder: is there any reference that is appropriate to cite when referring to the tz code and data? That is: since there isn't anything much in the way of a web page for the project, has there ever been any form of publication (academic paper, memo, ...), even a long time ago, describing the project/code/data? -- Joseph S. Myers jsm28(a)cam.ac.uk

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Re: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com
by Paul Eggert Feb. 4, 2000

Feb. 4, 2000

From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM The timezones.external(a)software.com list is for public discussion of timezone information. How does that mailing list's charter differ from that of tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov, which is a list for public discussion of time zone information that has been in use since 1986? I visited www.software.com, but found no discussion of the new list. How does one join, or view its message archive? IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones. How and why will this administration differ from the process already in place for the existing time zone database? 1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic). On 1998-07-16 Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca(a)renault.fr> wrote that he was implementing (1); you might ask him how far he got. 2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer. Isn't conversion automatic? If so, why would two databases need to be administered separately? One database should be generated automatically from the other. And if someone want to volunteer - make a converter to go from VTIMEZONE format to zic input format to keep the databases in sync. Why would this be necessary, if conversion is automatic? FYI, here is a brief summary of existing sources for time zone data: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm And here is a copy of the tz mailing list archive: ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzarchive.gz

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Re: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com
by Doug Royer Feb. 4, 2000

Feb. 4, 2000

It is very important that when scheduling across timezones that users across those time zones use the same time zone definitions. FYI: The biggest OS and application vendors on Microsoft and UNIX have applications out -now- that understand VTIMEZONE. This includes Outlook, Lotus Notes, Netscape Calendar, Sun, and the list goes on. Oracle is active as are other database vendors. iCalendar and VTIMEZONE have been in the works for years. There are also many other vendors coming up now on the internet that are supporting this format. It would be a little less critical if the data was a month or two out of date. Each side if using VTIMEZONE, would know when it was going to happen. I could write a batch job that woke up once a week to see if the Olson database had changed, if it had, run the converter to VTIMEZONE and send IANA email. I think that IANA could also do this without my help. -Doug > From: CHancuff(a)aol.com > Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 14:18:03 EST > > In a message dated 2/4/00 9:48:42 AM Eastern Standard Time, > Markus.Kuhn(a)cl.cam.ac.uk writes: > > > It is much less likely that the respective countries will report > > timezone changes directly to IANA officially. > > I may be the very least qualified on this mailing list to comment > (since the only other time I've posted concerned my intense > interest in discovering the time zone observed by an island > which spends 6 months/year underwater) but ... > > I can see the advantage of having a web presence to which > reports, rumors, and hearsay can also be reported, then brought > to this list for scrutiny. Perhaps a form page, where such things > can be entered. > > I'm trying to imagine the "signal to noise" ratio of a central > reporting venue like this one, but I can't. It might be worth a try. > > Cliff Hancuff > www.ClearDaySoftware.com -Doug ------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug(a)Royer.COM http://royer.com/People/Doug Text Pager: pager(a)Royer.com 801 W. El Camino #131 Mountain View, CA 94040 Ham Radio: N6AAW, Aviation: PP-ASEL

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Re: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com
by CHancuff＠aol.com Feb. 4, 2000

Feb. 4, 2000

In a message dated 2/4/00 9:48:42 AM Eastern Standard Time, Markus.Kuhn(a)cl.cam.ac.uk writes: > It is much less likely that the respective countries will report > timezone changes directly to IANA officially. I may be the very least qualified on this mailing list to comment (since the only other time I've posted concerned my intense interest in discovering the time zone observed by an island which spends 6 months/year underwater) but ... I can see the advantage of having a web presence to which reports, rumors, and hearsay can also be reported, then brought to this list for scrutiny. Perhaps a form page, where such things can be entered. I'm trying to imagine the "signal to noise" ratio of a central reporting venue like this one, but I can't. It might be worth a try. Cliff Hancuff www.ClearDaySoftware.com

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Re: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com
by Doug Royer Feb. 4, 2000

Feb. 4, 2000

> Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 18:22:20 +0000 > From: Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn(a)cl.cam.ac.uk> > > .. > > The basic idea seemed to have been quite agreeable, but in the end there > simply wasn't anyone volunteering to handle the bureaucracy necessary to > set up such a small institution. If two or three industrial sponsors > would come forward to cover the in the end surely quite marginal running > costs of such a small organization, I am sure it would be possible to > set up a suitable quotable but not quite sueable body. > > Publishing a single-page ISO standard that designates the named > organization to be the keeper of the ISO 16xyz time zone database would > surely sprinkle sufficient official magic around the entire thing to > keep even hard-line bureaucrats happy. Any reason it can't be IANA? We need to have a VTIMEZONE converter. I do NOT think it is important if the source is ZIC format and converted to VTIMEZONE on demand. -Doug ------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug(a)Royer.COM http://royer.com/People/Doug Text Pager: pager(a)Royer.com 801 W. El Camino #131 Mountain View, CA 94040 Ham Radio: N6AAW, Aviation: PP-ASEL

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FW: [Fwd: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com]
by Olson, Arthur David (NCI) Feb. 4, 2000

Feb. 4, 2000

Note that Doug Royer is not on the time zone mailing list; be sure to direct any replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM To: ietf-calendar(a)imc.org; tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: [Fwd: New Mail List - timezones.external(a)software.com] The timezones.external(a)software.com list is for public discussion of timezone information. IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones. This list will be an alias of IETF and non-IETF participants interested in porting the 'zic' software and its data format. There are three goals of this list. 1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic). 2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer. 3) Give away the results to the public domain. And if someone want to volunteer - make a converter to go from VTIMEZONE format to zic input format to keep the databases in sync. This list will go away after the above 3 these goals have been met. RFC-2445 defines VTIMEZONE. The government database source, zic source, and other related source is available from: ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub ----------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe, send mail to timezones.external-request(a)software.com with 'subscribe' in the body of the message. ----------------------------------------------------------------- <<Card for Doug Royer>>

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Re: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com
by Doug Royer Feb. 4, 2000

Feb. 4, 2000

> Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 11:28:31 -0500 > From: David Madeo <David.Madeo(a)msdw.com> > I won't speak for Doug, but I believe he intended to leverage the tz > mailing list and the packaged updates, but use the IANA as the > "official" repository for standards to reference. .... Yes - and the new list only purpose is to make the tool that converts from the ZIC format to RFC-2445 format. Then the new list will go away. -Doug ------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug(a)Royer.COM http://royer.com/People/Doug Text Pager: pager(a)Royer.com 801 W. El Camino #131 Mountain View, CA 94040 Ham Radio: N6AAW, Aviation: PP-ASEL

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Re: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com
by Doug Royer Feb. 4, 2000

Feb. 4, 2000

> To: tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov, ietf-calendar(a)imc.org > Cc: Doug Royer <doug(a)home.royer.com> > Subject: Re: New Mail List - timezones.external(a)software.com > X-URL: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ > Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 14:47:22 +0000 > From: Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn(a)cl.cam.ac.uk> > > Doug Royer <doug(a)home.royer.com>: > > There are three goals of this list. > > > > 1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) > > to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE > > format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic > > compiler (man zic). > > > > 2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA > > to administer. > > > > 3) Give away the results to the public domain. > > There might be a few misunderstandings involved here. First, there is no > "government timezone database". What you see on ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ > is the collaboration of a number of volunteers (Arthur Olson, Paul > Eggert, et al.), the result of which is commonly referred to as the > public domain "Olson database". The only relation to the US government > is that the group has been using an ftp server of the National Cancer > Institute, which happens to be located in the .gov domain. Thanks - I did not know what to call it :-) IANA has stepped up to doing this on the internet. There is now a international agreed way to represent timezones on the internet. And several large vendors (Microsoft, Sun, DEC, HP, IBM, ...) have agreed to use this format for calendar data. The EUC wants this format, as does the US internet community. > There exists already a well-established mailing list for discussions > on time zones and the maintenance of the Olson database, namely This list is for converting the data into RFC-2445 format, not for the discussion of timezones. We plan to use the Olson database to create the VTIMZONE data. Then IANA will keep the data. Several countries want an 'official' database, and IANA is where it is going to be kept. > tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov > > Contact > > tz-request(a)elsie.nci.nih.go > > to join the club. > > Since there is a lot of accumulated expertise on this mailing list, > handing over the administration of the database to IANA seems to be a > rather dubious buerocratic effort. Who at IANA would take over authority > over the database and is really comparably qualified to the current > contributors of the Olson database who have done a splendid job for > the last 15 years? Yes it has, not quite the same job however. We spent about 5 years coming to agreement on a way to represent this information on the internet. IANA is NOT going to be the source of the information. IANA is going to be the official outlet for the information in the agreed on format. > Please understand that IANA is a registration service, while what the > group around Olson is doing is more a detective service that observes > and documents the highly complicated world of national and regional > decisions about time-zone changes in the world. If government X is going > to change its local time zone, it is more likely that the database > maintainer will hear about this from various informers or media reports > around the world, as well as resources such as IATA or CIA. It is much > less likely that the respective countries will report timezone changes > directly to IANA officially. A detective service can provide a more > accurate representation of the real world than a registration service. And I suspect those tasks will remain separate. IANA is going to keep the VTIMEZONE format. It will be the internet standard way to get the data. Two public domain efforts (Java and C++) are being written now to process calendar and scheduling information. And VTIMEZONE will within a year be the official standard format that internet applications will be using to exchange time related information across time zones. > Just dropping the maintenance of the time zone database into the > responsibility of IANA might give them a task they underestimate at the > moment. IANA is going to keep the VTIMEZONE data. *MANY* vendors want an internet ready version of the data. I suspect in the not to distant future there will be timezone servers, where with the help of the tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov list and the Olson database companies can get timezone information, applications will have one standard way to exchange information when doing calendaring an scheduling. An internet application can then use an URL, (Possible) example: TZ://www.iana.org/vtimezone/US/Pacific Or maybe (I am not an HTTP expert) something like: TZ://www/iana.mirror.../vtimezone/lat?...,lon=? > If you don't like the current zic format, feel free to add a zic-> > VTIMEZONE format converter to the Olson package. Looks mostly like a > bijective transform to me, except that the zic input files contain a lot > of valuable comments that identify official reference documents. A ZIC -> VTIMEZONE converter is the primary goal of this new list. Once the goals are accomplished, this new list will go away. Again, I don't see the ZIC format going away. > Only if the output of that converter on the regular updates of the Olson > package turns out to be unsatisfactory, I would start worrying about > setting up a parallel bureaucracy and an independent database. I see > really no need for yet another mailing list. It's happening to write data to convert to VTIMEZONE. Then this new list will go away. > > RFC-2445 defines VTIMEZONE. > > BEGIN:VTIMEZONE > TZID:US--Fictitious-Eastern > LAST-MODIFIED:19870101T000000Z > BEGIN:STANDARD > DTSTART:19671029T020000 > RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10 > TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 > TZOFFSETTO:-0500 > TZNAME:EST > END:STANDARD > BEGIN:DAYLIGHT > DTSTART:19870405T020000 > RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYMONTH=4;UNTIL=19980404T070000Z > TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 > TZOFFSETTO:-0400 > TZNAME:EDT > END:DAYLIGHT > BEGIN:DAYLIGHT > DTSTART:19990424T020000 > RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=4 > TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 > TZOFFSETTO:-0400 > TZNAME:EDT > END:DAYLIGHT > END:VTIMEZONE > > If people really think that this looks that much nicer or easier to > parse for machines and humans ... Please join the IETF mailing list ietf-calendar(a)imc.org . Send requests to join to ietf-calendar-request(a)imc.org . It is already in 'proposed standard' state. It would take a LOT of work to change that format at this time. It can be for technical reasons. If you feel there are some PLEASE comment on the list. -Doug ------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug(a)Royer.COM http://royer.com/People/Doug Text Pager: pager(a)Royer.com 801 W. El Camino #131 Mountain View, CA 94040 Ham Radio: N6AAW, Aviation: PP-ASEL

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[Fwd: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com]
by Doug Royer Feb. 3, 2000

Feb. 3, 2000

The timezones.external(a)software.com list is for public discussion of timezone information. IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones. This list will be an alias of IETF and non-IETF participants interested in porting the 'zic' software and its data format. There are three goals of this list. 1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic). 2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer. 3) Give away the results to the public domain. And if someone want to volunteer - make a converter to go from VTIMEZONE format to zic input format to keep the databases in sync. This list will go away after the above 3 these goals have been met. RFC-2445 defines VTIMEZONE. The government database source, zic source, and other related source is available from: ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub ----------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe, send mail to timezones.external-request(a)software.com with 'subscribe' in the body of the message. -----------------------------------------------------------------

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