September 2000 - tz - lists.iana.org

proposed tz change for Latvia, Lithuania
by Paul Eggert 25 May '15

25 May '15

It's March Madness time for daylight-saving rule changes. Here's a proposed change to the tz database to keep up with the latest political development, which affects time stamps starting March 29: * Latvia and Lithuania will not observe DST, starting this year. Thanks to Andrei Ivanov for this info. =================================================================== RCS file: RCS/europe,v retrieving revision 2000.3 retrieving revision 2000.3.0.1 diff -pu -r2000.3 -r2000.3.0.1 --- europe 2000/03/04 15:31:08 2000.3 +++ europe 2000/03/08 17:48:59 2000.3.0.1 @@ -1135,6 +1135,12 @@ Link Europe/Rome Europe/San_Marino # 1997-01-21 on transition to Summer time ... established the same order of # daylight savings time settings as in the States of the European Union. +# From Andrei Ivanov (2000-03-06): +# This year Latvia will not switch to Daylight Savings Time (as specified in +# <a href="http://www.lv-laiks.lv/wwwraksti/2000/071072/vd4.htm"> +# The Regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Rep. of Latvia of +# 29-Feb-2000 (#79)</a>, in Latvian for subscribers only). + # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S Rule Latvia 1989 1996 - Mar lastSun 2:00s 1:00 S Rule Latvia 1989 1996 - Sep lastSun 2:00s 0 - @@ -1151,7 +1157,8 @@ Zone Europe/Riga 1:36:24 - LMT 1880 3:00 Russia MSK/MSD 1989 Mar lastSun 2:00s 2:00 1:00 EEST 1989 Sep lastSun 2:00s 2:00 Latvia EE%sT 1997 Jan 21 - 2:00 EU EE%sT + 2:00 EU EE%sT 2000 Feb 29 + 2:00 - EET # Liechtenstein # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] @@ -1178,6 +1185,11 @@ Zone Europe/Vaduz 0:38:04 - LMT 1894 Jun # motion to give up shifting to summer time in spring, as it was # already done by Estonia. +# From Andrei Ivanov (2000-03-06): +# I've heard that Ministers of three Baltic countries on their summit +# somewhere in February decided not to switch to summer time starting from +# this spring. + # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Europe/Vilnius 1:41:16 - LMT 1880 1:24:00 - WMT 1917 # Warsaw Mean Time @@ -1192,7 +1204,8 @@ Zone Europe/Vilnius 1:41:16 - LMT 1880 2:00 C-Eur EE%sT 1998 2:00 - EET 1998 Mar 29 1:00u 1:00 EU CE%sT 1999 Oct 31 1:00u - 2:00 EU EE%sT + 2:00 EU EE%sT 2000 Feb + 2:00 - EET # Luxembourg # Whitman disagrees with most of these dates in minor ways; go with Shanks.

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Alternative place names?
by Oscar van Vlijmen 04 Oct '00

04 Oct '00

> Jesper Nørgaard / Vietnam: Saigon vs. Ha Noi. > David Keegel / Theory file. > Gwillim Law / Theory file. > Vadim Vygonets / Saigon vs. Ha Noi and Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv. > Paul Eggert / Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv. > Gwillim Law / I think it's fine to put > alternative place names into the comments, but I hope we'll resist making > frequent changes to the zone names. One of the TZ prescriptions is: "Use the most populous among locations in a country's time zone, e.g. prefer `Shanghai' to `Beijing'. Among locations with similar populations, pick the best-known location, e.g. prefer `Rome' to `Milan'." The rationale of the 11 Theory prescriptions is of course: The user has to be able to find the wanted timezone immediately. I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. A capital is or should be known to everybody. Haven't we all had some kind of geography lessons, years or decades ago? If in a TZ application the end user is able to see the commented alternative names, then in some cases alternatives should be mentioned in the data files. If not, mentioning alternatives still could be useful to the developers of Windows, Macintosh and web derivatives of the TZ application. > Paul Eggert, Vadim Vygonets, Antoine Leca / China: Chongqing A recurring problem is that people inside and outside of China don't like the official pinyin transliteration. Most professional map makers however use pinyin. Officially (Peking University course) the q- sound is an aspirated voiceless affricate, with j- the unaspirated voiceless counterpart. In practice j- sounds more like the (voiced!) g- in English genuine and q- more like the ch- in English chew. How Chongqing is pronounced in Chongqing I do not know. What I do know is that Chongqing is the official pinyin transliteration. Chung is a British transliteration (Wade, 1867), indeed: tch'ong is the French EFEO (1902) transliteration, but k'ing is the French transliteration for pinyin qing, whereas ch'ing would be the British transliteration. I'll vote for pinyin Chongqing. > Antoine Leca / Cambodia: Phnum Penh There is a (Unicode) "Proposal for encoding the Khmer script", by Maurice Bauhahn, a proposal to ISO-IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. This is not a Romanization proposal, but in this document I found a reference to: American Library Association - Library of Congress romanization tables: transliteration schemes for non-Roman scripts approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, Randall K. Barry, ed. 1997, isbn 0844409405. Who has access to these tables? See also the ISO/TC46/SC2 working groups for international transliteration standards (http://www.elot.gr/tc46sc2/) I suggest: Phnom_Penh as zone name, Phnum Penh in comment. > Gwillim Law / Do not change established names unless they become ambiguous or > shockingly incorrect. Yes, but established by whom? And what would you call shockingly incorrect? To some people it's shockingly incorrect to say Kirgizstan instead of Kyrgyzstan, but a certain influential publication or whoever 'established' an alternative transliteration. Where to draw the line? > Vadim Vygonets / Kirgizstan BTW: Kyrgyz is not a Russian (Slavonic) language, but a Turkic language, and -i- and -y- indeed do sound different. > Paul Eggert / Hong Kong, Macao, Harbin, Urumqi, Kashgar. I'll vote for these as zone names; one could put more or less common or official alternatives in comments. Alternatives to Kashgar: Kaxgar, Kashi. Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-27

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Capitals
by Oscar van Vlijmen 03 Oct '00

03 Oct '00

> Garrett Wollman: > Many time-zone regions do not have a `capital' of any sort. To give > just one example, the time zone `America/Los_Angeles' has three > `capitals': Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia. None of these are obvious > choices. `America/Chicago' has even more possibilities. Dunno, the book "The world almanac and book of facts", World Almanac Books, 1998, gives on page 542 a list of US state capitals with Sacramento as the only capital of California, Springfield (not Chicago) as capital of Illinois, etcetera. Good maps will also show the one and only capital of states. For US states with 2 or more timezones, one could use the most populous county seats or courthouses. For instance, Indiana has 92 counties to choose from (ibid, page 424). The same information can be found (elsewhere) for Canada. But I think it's a bit futile to rework the whole tz database only for the sake of being administratively correct. Here and there a couple of obvious corrections won't hurt. But one may have a different opinion. Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-28

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Re: Alternative place names?
by Paul Eggert 03 Oct '00

03 Oct '00

Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen(a)tip.nl> writes: > I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population > count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. Actually, capitals change suprisingly often. E.g. Kazakhstan changed its capital in 1997, and then changed the capital's name in 1998. (Good thing they didn't use new time zone rules too, or we'd have had to track that mess.) Even China, the most populous country in the world, changed its capital twice in the last century (in 1928 and again in 1949) and there was a period in which the location of its capital was in serious dispute. Capitals are political creatures, and we are trying to avoid politics here as much as possible, so I don't want to give the "capitalness" of a city much weight. > Chung is a British transliteration (Wade, 1867), indeed: tch'ong is the > French EFEO (1902) transliteration, but k'ing is the French transliteration > for pinyin qing, whereas ch'ing would be the British transliteration. The name "Chungking" is not a systematic transliteration; it is merely traditional. It's probably the weakest of the existing Chinese names, i.e. the one where there is the strongest reason to change, as I get the feeling that the Pinyin transliteration "Chongqing" is gaining wide popularity in ordinary English usage. Google reports 38k English-language hits for "Chongqing" and 21k for "Chungking", so if we were choosing now "Chongqing" might well be the winner. But I'm not sure that this is enough to change an established name. Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen(a)tip.nl> writes: Paul Hill writes: > Someone said there is the rule: every country gets at least one entry. > Is this implemented in practice? Every country including all small > countries that share zones (like the Caribbean)? Yes. In hindsight this rule was probably unwise, as countries are also political creatures. Not sure I want to change it now, though.

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IAU resolution supporting leap second reform
by Paul Eggert 29 Sep '00

29 Sep '00

http://clockdev.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0009&L=leapsecs&F=lf&S=&… reports that the following resolution was adopted by the IAU last month: The International Astronomical Union Recognising 1. that the definition of Coordinated Universal time (UTC) relies on the astronomical observation of the UT1 time scale in order to introduce leap seconds, 2. that the unpredictability of leap seconds affects modern communication and navigation systems, 3. that astronomical observations provide an accurate estimate of the secular deceleration of the Earth's rate of rotation, Recommends 1. that the IAU establish a Working Group reporting to Division 1 at the General Assembly in 2003 to consider the redefinition of UTC, 2. that this study discuss whether there is a requirement for leap seconds, the possibility of inserting leap seconds at pre-determined intervals, and the tolerance limits for UT1-UTC, and 3. that this study be undertaken in cooperation with the appropriate groups of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-R), the International Bureau for Weights and Measures (BIPM), and relevant navigational agencies.

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Re: Alternative place names?
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl 29 Sep '00

29 Sep '00

> I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population > count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. A > capital is or should be known to everybody. Haven't we all had some kind of > geography lessons, years or decades ago? Oh, come on. How many people in the Netherlands know the official name of its capital? How many people not of Dutch origin know what the real capital is? And it would seem strange to use that name in the files in conjunction with "Amsterdam time". I am quite happy with Europe/Amsterdam, but that is where I live of course ;-). dik

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Re: Another capital
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl 28 Sep '00

28 Sep '00

>> Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! >> Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. >> The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). > Which makes it the capital by both the English meaning of the word (Webster) > and the Dutch meaning of the word (van Dale). Note that when I was at school > we were taught that The Hague was the capital, while the only claim to fame > of Amsterdam was that Kings and Queens would be crowned there. Forgot to mention something. You talk about "formal capital", but that can only be the case if it is written down somewhere in the legislation, but there is nothing about that anywhere. My (Dutch) encyclopedia (which postdates my schooldays by quite some years) says: "Generally Amsterdam is seen as the capital of the Netherlands although the seat of government is in The Hague." Note that this implies that it is not universal, nor that it would actually be correct. dik

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Re: Another capital
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl 28 Sep '00

28 Sep '00

> Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! > Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. > The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). Which makes it the capital by both the English meaning of the word (Webster) and the Dutch meaning of the word (van Dale). Note that when I was at school we were taught that The Hague was the capital, while the only claim to fame of Amsterdam was that Kings and Queens would be crowned there. dik

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Another capital
by Oscar van Vlijmen 28 Sep '00

28 Sep '00

> Dik Winter: > Oh, come on. How many people in the Netherlands know the official name > of its capital? How many people not of Dutch origin know what the real > capital is? And it would seem strange to use that name in the files in > conjunction with "Amsterdam time". I am quite happy with Europe/Amsterdam, > but that is where I live of course ;-). Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). Many globally accessible sources, e.g. the CIA World Factbook, will tell you the same. http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-28

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Re: Eastern Peace Time
by Paul Eggert 27 Sep '00

27 Sep '00

"Olson, Arthur David (NCI)" <olsona(a)dc37a.nci.nih.gov> writes: > Last night I heard part of a rebroadcast of a 1945 Arch Oboler radio > drama. In the introduction, Oboler spoke of "Eastern Peace Time." > An AltaVista search turned up http://rowayton.org/rhs/hstaug45.html > by way of confirmation. Peace is such a wonderful thing! We must put this into the database. > ...and presumably what's needed is a line between these two such as... > ...where h:mm is the time that the document ending the war was signed. The document was signed on September 2, but from that web page it appears that the radio was announcing "Eastern Peace Time" in August 1945. Truman officially declared V-J Day on August 15, 1945. Many people celebrate V-J day on September 2, when the documents were signed on the battleship Missouri, but that's not the right date for tz purposes. <http://www.merchant-marine.com/va--ammv.htm> says that at 0615 hours, the US Navy ordered that all offensive operations against Japan cease; this is the best time that I could find for the actual start of peace. > 1. What are the correct values for h and mm above? I would say August 15, 1945, at 06:15 -- presumably this was EWT, so the transition was at 10:15 Universal Time. # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S Rule US 1945 only - Aug 15 10:15u 1:00 P # Peace (V-J Day) I'll put this into my next proposed batch of changes.

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