November 2008 - 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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Tomsk wrong timezone
by Jesper Norgaard Welen 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '11

A quote from the 'europe' file: # Novosibirskaya oblast'. Zone Asia/Novosibirsk 5:31:40 - LMT 1919 Dec 14 6:00 6:00 - NOVT 1930 Jun 21 # Novosibirsk Time 7:00 Russia NOV%sT 1991 Mar 31 2:00s 6:00 Russia NOV%sT 1992 Jan 19 2:00s 7:00 Russia NOV%sT 1993 May 23 # say Shanks & P. 6:00 Russia NOV%sT # # From Oscar van Vlijmen (2001-08-25): [This region consists of] # Kemerovskaya oblast', Krasnoyarskij kraj, # Tajmyrskij (Dolgano-Nenetskij) avtonomnyj okrug, Tomskaya oblast', # Respublika Tuva, Respublika Khakasiya, Evenkijskij avtonomnyj okrug. Zone Asia/Krasnoyarsk 6:11:20 - LMT 1920 Jan 6 6:00 - KRAT 1930 Jun 21 # Krasnoyarsk Time 7:00 Russia KRA%sT 1991 Mar 31 2:00s 6:00 Russia KRA%sT 1992 Jan 19 2:00s 7:00 Russia KRA%sT In fact, it seems that Tomsk city and Tomskaya oblast' is part of the Novosibirsk timezone, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomskaya_Oblast%27%2C_Russia and http://www.admin.tomsk.ru/1024 ... the latter, if you don't understand russian, look at the time under the green horse. I don't know if this simply means that Tomskaya oblast' changed timezone since 2001, which is a possibility, that would then require a new timezone. Regards, - Jesper 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 (55) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (55) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the shareware program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/index.html

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zdump on 64bit architectures being worked on?
by Stuart Bishop 21 Jan '09

21 Jan '09

Hi. Is anyone looking at getting zdump(1) working on 64bit systems? http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.time.tz/2155/focus=2156 https://bugs.launchpad.net/pytz/+bug/213816 I'm currently parsing its output to generate some test suites and I'm one 4 year old laptop away from having no 32bit systems to work on... -- Stuart Bishop <stuart(a)stuartbishop.net> http://www.stuartbishop.net/

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FW: Australian DST abbreviations causing business problems - still
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] 15 Jan '09

15 Jan '09

I'm forwarding this message from Mick Johnston, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the list, please direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Mick Johnston [mailto:Mick.Johnston@coles.com.au] Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 1:42 To: 'tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov' Subject: Australian DST abbreviations causing business problems - still It's well past time the Australian 'Daylight Saving Time' abbreviations were updated to reflect the current terms and usage. Comments posted previously in the 'australasia' file are outdated and wrong and have been causing lots of problems for years. You don't have to take my word for this. Although most of the URLs identified in the file are not official sites and Daylight Saving Time is legislated by state governments, the exemplary abbreviations are displayed at the Australian federal government website at <http://www.australia.gov.au/Time#daylightsaving> as at 26/8/08. Here is the important bit: Quote: Where daylight saving is being observed: * AEST becomes Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +11. * ACST becomes Australian Central Daylight Time (ACDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +10 ½. * AWST becomes Australian Western Daylight Time (AWDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +9. " Unquote: The abbreviations AEDT, ACDT and AWDT are commonly shortened to EDT, CDT and WDT. Is there really a problem? Yes. I work for a national retail company that makes deliveries across the country. Here is just one example of the sorts of problems we face. Queensland don't have Daylight Saving Time. New South Wales (across the border from Queensland) do have Daylight Saving Time. Due to the fact that the Olsen data uses EST for both 'Eastern Summer Time' (New South Wales) and 'Eastern Standard Time' (Queensland), a delivery from New South Wales to Queensland can have a pickup time of 10.30am EST and a delivery time of 10.00am EST. We like to be efficient but we're not that good. System users only see the EST and get horribly confused. If the problem impacts businesses, then why don't they use their own time zone tables? It's not that simple. It's quite common today to find systems (like ours) that are purchased on an enterprise licence basis from a large international company. It could be difficult to get the company to change the base software product. Also, it's common for software products to run on standard operating systems such as the AIX flavour of Unix, and for the software products to use whatever time zone information is applied by the operating system. Try getting the operating system vendor to change their software and they'll simply tell you it's based on the Olsen updates. Then why hasn't the table been changed already? To answer this question, I need to address some of the comments previously made in the 'australasia' file. The first comment on this subject in the file was made by John Mackin back in 1991: JM:" We in Australia have _never_ referred to DST as `daylight' time. It is called `summer' time." MJ: This comment is more than 17 years old and horribly outdated. I have lived in Australia all my life and have been supporting systems here since well before 1991. Most Australians simply use the term 'Daylight Saving Time'. It's uncommon outside the business environment to use any other term. In business and government, Australians recognized the problems associated with ambiguous abbreviations a long time ago and have generally adopted the 'EDT' form. Various federal government websites (although not official), in an attempt to encourage uniformity, have been displaying the newer abbreviations for some time. See <http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/daysavtm.shtml> <http://www.australia.gov.au/Time#daylightsaving> Paul Eggert wrote an interesting post in 2001 that needs to be addressed. PE: "My own impression is that both "Daylight Time" and "Summer Time" are common and are widely understood, but that "Summer Time" is more popular;" MJ: Based on my day-to-day observations and discussions with people across states, most Australians now don't use the term 'Eastern Summer Time'. PE: "I just used AltaVista advanced search and got the following count of page hits: 1,103 "Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au 971 "Australian Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au 613 "Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au 127 "Australian Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au" MJ: I just googled (26/8/08) similar searches based on an "Australia only" search and my results were: 30,500 - "eastern daylight time" 5,640 - "eastern summer time" PE: "For abbreviations, tools like AltaVista are less useful because of ambiguity. Many hits are not really time zones, unfortunately, and many hits denote US time zones and not Australian ones. But here are the hit counts anyway: 161,304 "EST" and domain:au 25,156 "EDT" and domain:au" MJ: I agree with your comments, which means the figures are totally inaccurate. File Changes: Due to the fact that the file forms part of the JTZU (Java Time Zone Updates) provided by the operating system vendor, I am unable to create and test proposed changes. Also, there are quite a few changes required and I don't want to spend hours making these changes if they're not going to be applied. I ask for your advice on how to proceed with this. I am happy to work with you to produce a complete set of revised rules if you decide to go ahead with this proposal. We will need to change Aus, AW, AS, AT, AV and AN rules and their corresponding zone formats to use the 'E%sT' format. Thanks for your time and assistance Mick Johnston Dept: CGL - IT ES Supply Chain * L4 Bourke St. Melbourne (ILS Support) * (03) 9635 4457 This email and any attachments may contain privileged and confidential information and are intended for the named addressee only. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender and delete this e-mail immediately. Any confidentiality, privilege or copyright is not waived or lost because this e-mail has been sent to you in error. It is your responsibility to check this e-mail and any attachments for viruses. No warranty is made that this material is free from computer virus or any other defect or error. Any loss/damage incurred by using this material is not the sender's responsibility. The sender's entire liability will be limited to resupplying the material.

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FW: Wrong Argentinian DST introduced in version 2008f
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

I'm forwarding this message from Aurelien Jarno, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list, please direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Aurelien Jarno [mailto:aurelien@aurel32.net] Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 9:29 To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Wrong Argentinian DST introduced in version 2008f Hi, tzdata version 2008f introduced a rule for Argentinian DST based on http://www.worldtimezone.com/dst_news/dst_news_argentina03.html and http://www.impulsobaires.com.ar/nota.php?id=57832 Unfortunately those links only speak about rumors of a DST change, there is nothing fixed officially, and according to some Argentinian people DST may even not happen this year. Until an official decision is taken it is probably a lot better to remove any DST rule for year 2008. Please find attached a patch to do that. Regards, Aurelien -- .''`. Aurelien Jarno | GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73 : :' : Debian developer | Electrical Engineer `. `' aurel32(a)debian.org | aurelien(a)aurel32.net `- people.debian.org/~aurel32 | www.aurel32.net

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Brazil rule issue
by Alain Petit 09 Dec '08

09 Dec '08

Hi I am looking in the Brazil rules and I was wondering if this was expected: <snapshot> Rule Brazil 2007 only - Oct Sun>=8 0:00 1:00 S # From Frederico A. C. Neves (2008-09-10): # Acording to this decree # <a href="http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2007-2010/2008/Decreto/D6558.htm"> # http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2007-2010/2008/Decreto/D6558.htm # </a> # [t]he DST period in Brazil now on will be from the 3rd Oct Sunday to the # 3rd Feb Sunday. There is an exception on the return date when this is # the Carnival Sunday then the return date will be the next Sunday... Rule Brazil 2008 max - Oct Sun>=15 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2008 2011 - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2012 only - Feb Sun>=22 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2013 2014 - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2015 only - Feb Sun>=22 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2016 2022 - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2023 only - Feb Sun>=22 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2024 2025 - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2026 only - Feb Sun>=22 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2027 2033 - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2034 only - Feb Sun>=22 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2035 2036 - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Rule Brazil 2037 only - Feb Sun>=22 0:00 0 - # From Arthur David Olson (2008-09-29): # The next is wrong in some years but is better than nothing. Rule Brazil 2038 max - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - </snapshot> There is 2 'max' entry for Brazil, one for 2008, and one for 2038. Rule Brazil 2008 max - Oct Sun>=15 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2038 max - Feb Sun>=15 0:00 0 - Reading the entries for 2012+ I feel that the one for 2008 should be a 'only' rather than 'max'. Is that correct? Thanks Alain Petit

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FW: Incorrect time zone abbreviations for Indonesia
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] 05 Dec '08

05 Dec '08

I'm forwarding this message from Jason Grimes, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the list, please direct replies appropriately. Note that time zone abbreviations are consistently abbreviations of the English-language names of time zones. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Jason Grimes [mailto:jg@proz.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 12:23 To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Cc: Jason Grimes Subject: Incorrect time zone abbreviations for Indonesia Dear time zone data maintainers, I'm a developer at ProZ.com, a website for human language translators. One of our users has reported that the time zone names for the time zones in Indonesia, specifically Asia/Jakarta, Asia/Pontianak, Asia/Makassar, and Asia/Jayapura, are incorrect in the current time zone data. According to her, and to the following references, it appears that these time zone abbreviations should be updated as follows: ID offset current new Asia/Jakarta UTC+7 WIT WIB (Waktu Indonesia Barat) Asia/Pontianak UTC+7 WIT WIB (Waktu Indonesia Barat) Asia/Makassar UTC+8 CIT WITA (Waktu Indonesia Tengah) Asia/Jayapura UTC+9 EIT WIT (Waktu Indonesia Timur) References: http://time.kim.lipi.go.id/ http://www.statoids.com/tid.html I noticed a similar bug report from 2005 but I was unable to find any resolution: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.glibc/12741/match=indo nesia I hope this gives enough information to update these time zone names. Thanks to all of you who help to maintain this valuable resource. Best regards, Jason Grimes

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Posix Timezone format
by Louis Guindon 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

Hi All, My goal is to provide a user interface showing the information derived from the TZ zone name. Based on the selected TZ zone name by the user, I will assign the corresponding POSIX time zone string to the Linux /tmp/TZ file. This way the local time will show up properly for the user. However, I am having difficulty to find a reliable source for POSIX time zone string representation for each defined time zone in the Olson database. Also, the Olson database is changing many times a year which is making it difficult to hardcode anything in advance. I am sure that my problem already encountered by someone on this mailing list and I am wandering if there is a way to query the current version of the Olson database with some tool to return the related POSIX representation for the requested time zone. I don't know if there is an alternative way, but I am also wandering if the TZ time zone name can used directly without going through the POSIX representation of the time zone. Note: POSIX time zone representation for me is the following. The TZ zone name America/Los_angeles is represented as PST8PDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0. Regards, Louis Guindon PMC-Sierra Senior System Design Engineer

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Time Zone naming
by Martin Barnes 28 Nov '08

28 Nov '08

I have a question related to the accepted standard for expressing the "Olsen" name where multiple zones exhibit the same "behaviour" in terms of belonging to the same country, having the same UTC offset and exactly the same DST rules. For example, it appears that all clocks within all locations within Argentina will have the same time all year round. The 12 zones reveal the same behaviour. The same is true of China and a number of other countries. I have been aware of the concept of a "consolidated" or "preferred" time zone which is a combined zone that takes the name of the most important location (eg. "America/Buenos_Aires" in the case of Argentina) Do these combined "super" zones exist? If so, is there information available that indicates how the individual zones roll up? My enquiry relates to a need to provide information that can identify the correct timezone for every place (city, postcode, county, state, etc etc) on earth via a back-end mapping service that calculates the spatial relationship between the place coordinate and the timezone boundary. I am looking to build up an accurate timezone boundary map essentially using existing map objects as building blocks. Many thanks -Martin Barnes ______________________ GeoData Manager Yahoo! Geo Technologies Geo Informatics team London

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zdump loop problem
by Robbin Kawabata 25 Nov '08

25 Nov '08

This sounds like a problem we encountered too. zdump.c uses behavior of integer overflow on L.358 to detect when newt has reached or exceeded the maximum time_t value. When newt exceeds the maximum time_t value from L.356, it overflows to a negative number, so the L.358 check for newt less than t succeeds. However according to the C Standard, the behavior of integer overflow is undefined (see below). The Sun Studio 11 compiler with -O flag optimizes L.358 out, because it detects the check is not needed, because for the valid range of time_t, newt will never be > t, since from L.355 newt is t plus a positive number. With L.358 optimized out, the for loop at L.352 executes infinitely. zdump.c: ... 249 time_t t; 250 time_t newt; ... 352 for ( ; ; ) { 353 if (t >= cuthitime) 354 break; 355 newt = t + SECSPERHOUR * 12; <-- 356 if (newt >= cuthitime) 357 break; 358 if (newt <= t) <-- 359 break; 360 newtmp = localtime(&newt); ... 376 t = newt; 377 tm = newtm; 378 tmp = newtmp; 379 } A possible fix is to instead check whether t plus delta (delta = SECSPERHOUR * 12) is greater than the maximum time_t: (time + delta) > max_time_t or: time > max_time_t - delta /* avoids time+delta overflow */ ------- zdump.c ------- @@ -314,11 +314,12 @@ for (;;) { if (t >= cuthitime) break; + /* check if newt will overrun maximum time_t value */ + if (t > LONG_MAX - (SECSPERHOUR * 12)) + break; newt = t + SECSPERHOUR * 12; if (newt >= cuthitime) break; - if (newt <= t) - break; newtmp = localtime(&newt); if (newtmp != NULL) newtm = *newtmp; The C Standard says (for signed integer): ISO/IEC 9899:1999: 6.5 p5: If an exceptional condition occurs during the evaluation of an expression (that is, if the result is not mathematically defined or not in the range of representable values for its type), the behavior is undefined. 3.4.3 p3: EXAMPLE: An example of undefined behavior is the behavior on integer overflow. > Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:09:13 -0500 > From: "Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]" <olsona(a)dc37a.nci.nih.gov> > Subject: FW: mail to tz list bounced > To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov > Cc: Andreas Radke <a.radke(a)arcor.de> > > I'm forwarding this message from Andreas Radke; while Andreas is on the > time zone mailing list, the message bounced when he tried to send it > directly. > > --ado > > Datum: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:47:05 +0100 > Von: Andreas Radke <a.radke(a)arcor.de> > An: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov > Betreff: optimization -O2 broken? > > I'm the ArchLinux package maintainer for tzdata. We are using gcc > 4.3.2/glibc2.8- We have run into a small problem with compiler > optimizations. > > Using our default CFLAGS="-march=i686 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe" the > zdump binary is built in broken way on i686 architecture. I have to > apply -O1 to make zdump work. See our bugreport: > http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11947 > > I could confirm this when running zdump -v EUROPE/BERLIN it stuck after > two printing first two lines. > > x86_64 architecture doesn't seem to be affected. Any idea why this > happens and how to fix it? > > -Andy >

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