October 2002 - 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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<http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/> discussion and corrections
by Paul Eggert 23 Oct '02

23 Oct '02

I compared the current version of the Webexhibits Daylight Saving Time pages with the tz database at <ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tz/> and have the following comments. <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html> says: * Fiji observes DST; but our information is that they stopped in 2000. * Mongolia observes DST; but our information is that they no longer do so (as of 2002). * Tonga observes DST from the first Saturday in October to third Saturday in April; but our information is that it is now the first Sunday in November to the last Sunday in January. * Russia observes the same DST rules as Europe; but Europe switches at 01:00 UTC, whereas Russia switches at 02:00 local time. * Cuba observes DST starting April 1; but our current information is that they start on the first Sunday in April, i.e. that they use the North American rules except that they change clocks at midnight rather than at 02:00. * Brazil observes DST from the first Sunday in October to the last Sunday in February; but this year it's the first Sunday in November to the third Sunday in February (rules vary quite a bit from year to year). Also, equatorial Brazil does not observe DST. * We have lots of different reports about the Falklands, but your data differs from all of our reports. Do you have a citation for your info? (The Falklands appears to be somewhat catch-as-catch-can.) * Do you have a reference for your information that Rothera, Antarctica, is 3 hours behind UTC all year? * Paraguay has changed its rules; it now observes DST from the first Sunday in September to the first Sunday in April. See decree no. 16350, dated 2002-02-26. A few other comments: <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html> says "the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana" does not observe DST. This is true for most of that part of Indiana, but as you point out in <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/f.html>, a few counties in southeastern Indiana observe EST with DST. So perhaps you could say "most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana" instead. <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/c.html> says "Eventually, in 1925, it was enacted that summer time should begin on the day following the third Saturday in April. The date for closing of summer time was fixed for the first Saturday in October." As can be seen in <http://student.cusu.cam.ac.uk/~jsm28/british-time/>, this is incorrect for both the starting and the ending days. Perhaps you could replace that with "Eventually, in 1925, it was enacted that summer time should begin on the day following the third Saturday in April (or one week earlier if that day was Easter Day). The date for closing of summer time was fixed for the day after the first Saturday in October." <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/d.html> says "Nor was the suggestion of Charles Dowd of Saratoga Springs, N. Y., in 1870, to establish standard time meridians taken seriously." This is a bit harsh, as Dowd revised his proposal in 1872 and the revised proposal was adopted virtually unchanged by the railways of the USA and Canada eleven years later. Certainly Fleming deserves a lot of the credit, but it goes too far to say that Dowd was not taken seriously. <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html> says "This [1916] action was immediately followed by other countries in Europe, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, France and Portugal." You might want to add Luxembourg and Turkey to that list. Also Tasmania, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba, though these regions are not in Europe. It also says "In 1917, Australia, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia initiated it." Hmm, perhaps your records for Nova Scotia differ from ours? We have Halifax as not observing DST in 1917, even though it did observe in 1916. Other areas that introduced DST in 1917 were Russia, Iceland, Spain and Quebec. (In this area our data come from Shanks.) <http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html> says "During the summer, Russia's clocks are two hours ahead of standard time." This is not quite true, at least by the ordinary definition of "standard time". For example, Moscow standard time (UTC+3) is about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC+2:30); this is about the same situation as Detroit, whose standard time (UTC-5) is also about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC-5:32). It is true that Russian standard time tends to be further in advance of local mean time than is usual for the rest of the world, but it goes too far to say that Russia is on DST or double-DST all year. Thanks for your job in maintaining that set of web pages; they're quite nice.

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Re: FW: About rules for Brazil
by Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires 23 Oct '02

23 Oct '02

John Cowan wrote: > However, I think the important point is that the database not impose > guesses about the utterly uncertain future. It is fair enough to > guess that U.S. DST will stay the same, since it has been quite stable. > But guessing that next year in Brazil will be like last year, when last > year was not like the year before, and so on, strikes me as bogus. > > In short, I agree that "only" should be the rule here. That what I wanted to mean, and failed to state as clearly as you did. > > A similar situation obtains in Israel, where the guesses after 2004 > > are quite arbitrary. However, for the few applications that need > > access to future civil time (planning airplane trips?) I think it > > better to have a good guess than to guess that there will be no DST at > > all. > > I see your point, but in fact airplane trips are *not* the only case. > Any time you make an appointment to do something or meet someone in > the future, you are implicitly making it in civil time for the place > of the appointment. If I say to someone "Meet me under the Waverley > [that's a place in Manhattan] at midnight, New Year's Eve 2004" , then > the appointment is set for midnight *local time* whatever that may be. > For a more commercial example, when a stock tender or a futures option > expires as of 5 PM, New York time, on such-and-such a day, that means > at whatever GMT time Congress decrees is equal to 5 PM New York time *as > of that day*. I was more concerned about much simpler things. There are some computer systems and applications where time has a central role. Some of those applications must interface with real people, both on input and on output, and real people (even technicians) are not familiar with time_t, GMT or UTC. The user may input time and not have the expected action happen at the expected time because of bad assumptions about DST (assuming no DST at all among those assumptions). Many applications also have design problems that become evident when crossing DST start/end borders, regardless of when time shifts actually happen -- even standard UNIX date(1) is DST unfriendly. Another problem is that tz repository was only updated (2002d) _after_ DST begun for users of 2002c(timestamp for ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata_2002d.tar.gz is 2002/10/15, while DST started at 2002/10/13 03:00:00 GMT for tzdata 2002c), because of a rule that should have been applied only last year. This fault, however, is not solely TZ people's; related information simply wasn't where people expected it to be (Brazilian National Observatory's (ON) web site was the traditional source, but elsie.nci.nih.gov was also outdated). Only by digging the web could I find the information I wanted, just a couple of days before brazilian clocks would get wrong time. -- Pappires ... Qui habet aurem audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.

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Re: Mongolia no DST?
by Paul Eggert 22 Oct '02

22 Oct '02

> From: Jesper Nørgaard [mailto:jnorgard@Prodigy.Net.mx] > Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:07 AM > I noticed that there is no DST for Mongolia for 2002. Is that a > deliberate decision, or is it because we have no "max" rule instead > of "only" rules? I don't recall having seen any decision that they > were taken off using DST during the year. I vaguely recall that the 2001 DST in Mongolia was somewhat experimental, which is why I listed it for that year only in the tz database. I just did a brief search on the web and found nothing definitive or even suggestive about 2002 (or about 2001, for that matter). Perhaps Rives McDow, who contributed the 2001 info, knows what happened this year in Mongolia. (McDow is so good at this that he may even know what is predicted to happen _next_ year.)

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FW: Mongolia no DST?
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) 22 Oct '02

22 Oct '02

-----Original Message----- From: Jesper Nørgaard [mailto:jnorgard@Prodigy.Net.mx] Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:07 AM To: 'TZ mailing list' Subject: Mongolia no DST? I noticed that there is no DST for Mongolia for 2002. Is that a deliberate decision, or is it because we have no "max" rule instead of "only" rules? I don't recall having seen any decision that they were taken off using DST during the year. Regards, 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 (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 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.cimmyt.org/timezone/index.htm

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Mongolia no DST?
by Jesper Nørgaard 22 Oct '02

22 Oct '02

I noticed that there is no DST for Mongolia for 2002. Is that a deliberate decision, or is it because we have no "max" rule instead of "only" rules? I don't recall having seen any decision that they were taken off using DST during the year. Regards, 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 (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 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.cimmyt.org/timezone/index.htm

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Re: FW: About rules for Brazil
by John Cowan 21 Oct '02

21 Oct '02

Paul Eggert scripsit: > In this month's case you would be right, of course; but I suspect that > it will be just as common for the clocks to be advanced ahead of our > guess as behind, and there your proposed strategy would fail just as > badly as the tz database's current approach. However, I think the important point is that the database not impose guesses about the utterly uncertain future. It is fair enough to guess that U.S. DST will stay the same, since it has been quite stable. But guessing that next year in Brazil will be like last year, when last year was not like the year before, and so on, strikes me as bogus. In short, I agree that "only" should be the rule here. > A similar situation obtains in Israel, where the guesses after 2004 > are quite arbitrary. However, for the few applications that need > access to future civil time (planning airplane trips?) I think it > better to have a good guess than to guess that there will be no DST at > all. I see your point, but in fact airplane trips are *not* the only case. Any time you make an appointment to do something or meet someone in the future, you are implicitly making it in civil time for the place of the appointment. If I say to someone "Meet me under the Waverley [that's a place in Manhattan] at midnight, New Year's Eve 2004" , then the appointment is set for midnight *local time* whatever that may be. For a more commercial example, when a stock tender or a futures option expires as of 5 PM, New York time, on such-and-such a day, that means at whatever GMT time Congress decrees is equal to 5 PM New York time *as of that day*. I have been for some years now telling people who are not on this mailing list that it is safe to use GMT or GMT+offset for present and past times, but that when an application stores future times, it should store a local time and a timezone name. Even this is not infallible -- we don't know how the TZ system will work in the year 2076 -- but it's a lot better than storing a GMT+offset and hoping nothing weird happens. -- John Cowan <jcowan(a)reutershealth.com> http://www.reutershealth.com http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz. -- Calvin, giving Newton's First Law "in his own words"

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FW: About rules for Brazil
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) 21 Oct '02

21 Oct '02

Paulo is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires [mailto:p@ppires.org] Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 12:16 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: About rules for Brazil Hello, folks. I have recently downloaded tzdata 2002d, which brings new rules for Brazil again, because the government again changed when summer time starts. I suggest that rules for Brazil don't ever be considered permanent, i.e., make no use of "max" for new rules, but instead use "only". Regardless of a public poll at National Obversatory's (ON is the official source of time information for the country) web site, to learn if Brazilians would like to have fixed dates for start and end of summer time, the dates were changed again because of plain stupidity -- Electoral authorities forgot about summer time at all, and because of stupid machine programming, start of summer time had to be delayed. It is certain that the new rules will not be used in the next year, when there will be no elections, and this delay (hopefully) will not be necessary. Reading the source file for timezone data for Brazil is a joke. Things like a mayor who tries to change time in his city, and authorities forgetting about summer time in planning important occasions are everywhere. Not having fixed rules is a major cause of such a mess. This year, the decree stating that summer time should begin not on the second Sunday of October (yet no such decree ever existed before -- each ear a _new_ decree said "it starts on day X and ends on day Y"), but later, was published by the end of its first week, and not reflected on ON's web site, where most of us used to find such rules. The result is that many people, again, had their clocks wrong. I believe that if clocks eventually go wrong, it would be better if they just remained in the regular time. The effect of not advancing the clock causes less impact (and surprises) than having it unexpectly be one hour ahead.of what users think it should be, because of assuming that rules for the previous year will be used again (even though it sounds very reasonable to our technical ears). So, we now have Rule Brazil 2001 max - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2002 only - Nov 3 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2003 max - Oct Sun>=8 0:00 1:00 S but this is wrong, if nothing else, at least because of one very simple reason (already mentioned): "Oct Sun>=8" or "Feb Sun>=15" may look like a good aproach, and result of careful observation by some of us, but they are not in any previous decree, and assuming it may fail in the future again (and it fails in the past too, if we start looking back. as far as 1998 and before). Let's not go beyong the facts we know, that is we know when summer time starts in 2002 and ends in 2003, and nothing more. Besides that, let those of us who are Brazilians try to push the goverment into using permanent criterion, so that mess doesn't happen again. (BTW, I didn't have problems this year, because when I noticed that ON didn't publish anything until last year's start date was to close, I dug the Net and found this year's decree). -- Pappires ... Qui habet aurem audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.

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help
by Steve Mann 21 Oct '02

21 Oct '02

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About rules for Brazil
by Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires 21 Oct '02

21 Oct '02

Hello, folks. I have recently downloaded tzdata 2002d, which brings new rules for Brazil again, because the government again changed when summer time starts. I suggest that rules for Brazil don't ever be considered permanent, i.e., make no use of "max" for new rules, but instead use "only". Regardless of a public poll at National Obversatory's (ON is the official source of time information for the country) web site, to learn if Brazilians would like to have fixed dates for start and end of summer time, the dates were changed again because of plain stupidity -- Electoral authorities forgot about summer time at all, and because of stupid machine programming, start of summer time had to be delayed. It is certain that the new rules will not be used in the next year, when there will be no elections, and this delay (hopefully) will not be necessary. Reading the source file for timezone data for Brazil is a joke. Things like a mayor who tries to change time in his city, and authorities forgetting about summer time in planning important occasions are everywhere. Not having fixed rules is a major cause of such a mess. This year, the decree stating that summer time should begin not on the second Sunday of October (yet no such decree ever existed before -- each ear a _new_ decree said "it starts on day X and ends on day Y"), but later, was published by the end of its first week, and not reflected on ON's web site, where most of us used to find such rules. The result is that many people, again, had their clocks wrong. I believe that if clocks eventually go wrong, it would be better if they just remained in the regular time. The effect of not advancing the clock causes less impact (and surprises) than having it unexpectly be one hour ahead.of what users think it should be, because of assuming that rules for the previous year will be used again (even though it sounds very reasonable to our technical ears). So, we now have Rule Brazil 2001 max - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2002 only - Nov 3 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2003 max - Oct Sun>=8 0:00 1:00 S but this is wrong, if nothing else, at least because of one very simple reason (already mentioned): "Oct Sun>=8" or "Feb Sun>=15" may look like a good aproach, and result of careful observation by some of us, but they are not in any previous decree, and assuming it may fail in the future again (and it fails in the past too, if we start looking back. as far as 1998 and before). Let's not go beyong the facts we know, that is we know when summer time starts in 2002 and ends in 2003, and nothing more. Besides that, let those of us who are Brazilians try to push the goverment into using permanent criterion, so that mess doesn't happen again. (BTW, I didn't have problems this year, because when I noticed that ON didn't publish anything until last year's start date was to close, I dug the Net and found this year's decree). -- Pappires ... Qui habet aurem audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.

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