May 2001 - tz - lists.iana.org

Summertime in Sweden 1916.
by Ivan Nilsson May 13, 2001

May 13, 2001

I have now found a newspapper stating that at 01:00 october 1st 1916 summertime the church-clocks etc were set back one hour to show 0:00 october 1st 1916 standard time. The article also reports that some people thought the switch to standard time would take place already at 0:00 october 1st 1916 summer time, but they had to wait for another hour before the event took place. Source: The newspaper "Dagens Nyheter", ocober 1st 1916, page 7 to the upper left. /Regards Ivan Nilsson

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Mongolia time zones
by Rives McDow May 13, 2001

May 13, 2001

Dear Paul and all, In addition to Mongolia starting daylight savings as reported earlier (adopted dst on April 27, 2001,0200 local time, ending Sept. 28, 2001), there are three time zones. Provinces 19 hours from the IDL: Bayan-ulgii, Uvs, Khovd, Zavkhan, Govi-Altai Provinces 20 hours from the IDL: Khovsgol, Bulgan, Arkhangai, Khentii, Tov, Bayankhongor, Ovorkhangai, Dundgovi, Dornogovi, Omnogovi, Provinces 21 hours from the IDL: Choibalsan, Sukhbaatar Rives McDow

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Re: Updated Australian time zone names/strings
by Robbin Kawabata May 4, 2001

May 4, 2001

> From eggert(a)twinsun.com Thu May 3 15:43:17 2001 > From: Paul Eggert <eggert(a)twinsun.com> > > > From: "Olson, Arthur David (NCI)" <olsona(a)dc37a.nci.nih.gov> > > Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 10:03:51 -0400 > > > Another possibility would be a separate environment variable that, if > > defined, would request numeric abbreviations. This has the advantage (and > > disadvantage) of providing for some system-level control: putting > > TZNUMERIC=1 > > (or whatever) in the system-wide startup file would buy numeric > > abbreviations no matter what TZ value a particular user set up (unless, of > > course, the user undid the TZNUMERIC). > > I can seem some problems with this approach. For example, I've > written shell commands like this: > > LC_ALL=C TZ=GMT0 date > > in order to get a string like the following reliably, in all environments > (even those where "date -u" doesn't work): > > Thu May 3 22:32:37 GMT 2001 > > But with TZNUMERIC, the output might look like this instead: > > Thu May 3 22:32:37 +0000 2001 > > and the extra data might mess up the output format. > > > The Theory file says the following about TZ, explaining why the tz > code uses TZ rather than some other environment variable. > > It was recognized that allowing the "TZ" environment variable to > take on values such as "America/New_York" might cause "old" programs > (that expect "TZ" to have a certain form) to operate incorrectly; > consideration was given to using some other environment variable > (for example, "TIMEZONE") to hold the string used to generate the > time zone information file name. In the end, however, it was decided > to continue using "TZ": it is widely used for time zone purposes; > separately maintaining both "TZ" and "TIMEZONE" seemed a nuisance; > and systems where "new" forms of "TZ" might cause problems can simply > use TZ values such as "EST5EDT" which can be used both by > "new" programs (a la POSIX) and "old" programs (as zone names and > offsets). > > Isn't this argument still sound, and doesn't it argue against moving > the functionality into a new environment variable like TZNUMERIC? Also, TZNUMERIC would violate POSIX. POSIX says date.1 and strftime() should use the TZ variable. The %Z specifier for date.1 and strftime() (which prints the timezone abbreviation), should key off the TZ variable. Robbin

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Re: timezones
by Robert Elz May 4, 2001

May 4, 2001

Thanks for sharing your list with the tz mailing list. In return, I'll add to your data by noting that CST can also be "Central Summer Time" (Australian) +1030, and that EST can be "Eastern Summer Time" (Australian) +1100 (if you look closely, you'll find those in the tz database) That list is certainly interesting, I'm from Melbourne, Australia, and I can't even begin to imaging what LIGT is supposed to represent... If nothing else though, your list will certainly quieten those who believe that if a few changes are made to the list of abbreviations in the data base will make them all unique, so that people can take an abbreviation and from that determine the offset. The huge number of ambiguities in your list (same abbreviation, different offset) ends that forever I hope. kre

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RE: Updated Australian time zone names/strings
by Olson, Arthur David (NCI) May 3, 2001

May 3, 2001

> > OK, how about this idea? If TZ='Australia/Sydney:' then use numeric > > abbreviations. The basic idea is to append a suffix that cannot > > possibly be part of a portable POSIX file name. > I guess we could, though I'm not overly enamoured with the "cannot possibly > be part of a portable POSIX file name" part. We should certainly not be > presuming that any such names can be used, and should not be naming zones in > non-portable ways, but if someone decides to name a timezone file > /path/to/EST:EDT (and it happens to work on his system) I'd prefer not to > break things. > Of course, it can be documented that ':' is magic in TZ file names (or > what would otherwise be a TZ file name) but it does seem a bit ugly. Another possibility would be a separate environment variable that, if defined, would request numeric abbreviations. This has the advantage (and disadvantage) of providing for some system-level control: putting TZNUMERIC=1 (or whatever) in the system-wide startup file would buy numeric abbreviations no matter what TZ value a particular user set up (unless, of course, the user undid the TZNUMERIC). --ado

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FW: timezones
by Olson, Arthur David (NCI) May 3, 2001

May 3, 2001

Ron Woodall is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Ron Woodall [mailto:nor@htmlcompendium.org] Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 10:43 AM To: tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: timezones Dear Sirs/Mesdames: Over the past several weeks I've been researching time zones and have compiled a list of time zones, offsets and abbreviations. I submit it to your scrutiny. It will eventually be included in "The Compendium of HTML Elements" (www.htmlcompendium.org) in support of our sections on Log Analysis and Server Side Includes. This information may be of interest/use in your environment. This page cannot be quoted simply because there is nothing original here. I refer to many sources, including your listings, that may or may not be correct. I do provide proper credits where due. I welcome any corrections, comments, complaints or suggestions you might have. Thank you for your assistance and look forward to your comments. Ron Woodall

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Typo in timezone database, src/share/zoneinfo australasia
by Jens Schweikhardt May 2, 2001

May 2, 2001

Dear time zone database maintainer, FYI, there's a typo in the australasia part of the db. Regards, Jens -- Jens Schweikhardt http://www.schweikhardt.net/ SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)

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timezones
by Ron Woodall May 2, 2001

May 2, 2001

Dear Sirs/Mesdames: Over the past several weeks I've been researching time zones and have compiled a list of time zones, offsets and abbreviations. I submit it to your scrutiny. It will eventually be included in "The Compendium of HTML Elements" (www.htmlcompendium.org) in support of our sections on Log Analysis and Server Side Includes. This information may be of interest/use in your environment. This page cannot be quoted simply because there is nothing original here. I refer to many sources, including your listings, that may or may not be correct. I do provide proper credits where due. I welcome any corrections, comments, complaints or suggestions you might have. Thank you for your assistance and look forward to your comments. Ron Woodall --------------------------------------- Ron Woodall nor(a)htmlcompendium.org The Compendium of HTML Elements "your essential web publishing resource" - available at/disponible à: http://au.htmlcompendium.org/index.htm (Australia) http://www.htmlcompendium.org/index.htm (Europe and North America)

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RE: Time on Jan Mayen
by Jesper Nørgaard May 1, 2001

May 1, 2001

In that case I presume the 'europe' file should be corrected from this: # Svalbard & Jan Mayen Link Europe/Oslo Arctic/Longyearbyen # From Whitman: # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Atlantic/Jan_Mayen -1:00 - EGT ... to something like this: # Svalbard & Jan Mayen Link Europe/Oslo Arctic/Longyearbyen Link Europe/Oslo Atlantic/Jan_Mayen The question is if Whitman's observation for Jan Mayen Island was correct earlier, in that case we will have to reuse parts of the first definition. Although EGT is a bit misleading perhaps because East Greenland (Scoresbysund) is using EU rules with DST, which might not coincide with what Jan Mayen had. I suggest that this needs to be investigated a bit further (hint, hint, I will probably not do it :) Regards, Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Programador/Analista 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 (5) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (5) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 CIMMYT home page: http://cimmyt.cgiar.org Check out my free program World Time Explorer: http://www20.Brinkster.com/timezone50/index.htm http://members.theglobe.com/timezone50/index.htm ---------- From: Olson, Arthur David (NCI)[SMTP:olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov] Sent: Lunes 30 de Abril de 2001 6:55 To: Tz (E-mail) Subject: FW: Time on Jan mayen M. H. P. van Genderen is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Genderen, M.H.P. van [mailto:M.H.P.v.Genderen@tue.nl] Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 2:54 AM To: 'tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov' Subject: Time on Jan mayen Hi, I asked the crew of the meteorological station on Jan Mayen Island (janmayen(a)ftd.mil.no) what time they used, and this is their answer: > We are using the same time as i Norway, and are following the summer and winter time as i Norway. > Regards > Åge-leif Godø So it seems that the time zone should be changed from East Greenland Time to Oslo time for Jan Mayen. Yours, Marcel van Genderen _______________________________________ Dr. Marcel van Genderen Assistant Professor Lab Macromolecular and Organic Chemistry Room STO 4.45 Eindhoven University of Technology PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands Tel: +31-40-2473139. Fax: +31-40-2451036 E-mail: M.H.P.v.Genderen(a)tue.nl Homepage: www.chem.tue.nl/toc

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Military / NATO single-letter time zone names
by Markus Kuhn May 1, 2001

May 1, 2001

Interesting bit from the new RFC 2822, which supersedes the RFC 822 Internet email header format: The form "+0000" SHOULD be used to indicate a time zone at Universal Time. Though "-0000" also indicates Universal Time, it is used to indicate that the time was generated on a system that may be in a local time zone other than Universal Time and therefore indicates that the date-time contains no information about the local time zone. [...] The 1 character military time zones were defined in a non-standard way in [RFC822] and are therefore unpredictable in their meaning. The original definitions of the military zones "A" through "I" are equivalent to "+0100" through "+0900" respectively; "K", "L", and "M" are equivalent to "+1000", "+1100", and "+1200" respectively; "N" through "Y" are equivalent to "-0100" through "-1200" respectively; and "Z" is equivalent to "+0000". However, because of the error in [RFC822], they SHOULD all be considered equivalent to "-0000" unless there is out-of-band information confirming their meaning. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

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