May 2012 - tz - lists.iana.org

Idaho tz correction
by Alan Mintz May 22, 2012

May 22, 2012

I see someone tried to address this last month but it kind of fell flat. The solution seems clear to me, as described here: >In ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/data/northamerica v8.54 dated 2009-05-17 (the >current version), it says" > ># US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles ># ># California, northern Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, ># Idaho, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, ># and the northern three-quarters of Idaho county), ># most of Nevada, most of Oregon, and Washington > >The first instance of Idaho in the county list (between Clearwater and >Kootenai) should be removed since the list ends with "and the northern >three-quarters of Idaho county". That is, only the northern 3/4 of the >county, not the whole county, is included (assuming that is true). The dividing line is actually the Salmon River, so I would change the paragraph to: # US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles # # California, northern Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, # Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, # and the part of Idaho county lying north of the Salmon River), # most of Nevada, most of Oregon, and Washington If we wanted to give the same detail treatment to NV and OR: # US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles # # - California # - Washington # - Northern Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, # Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, # and the part of Idaho county lying north of the Salmon River) # - Oregon (except for the northern 3/4 of Malheur County) # - Nevada (except for West Wendover) I attempted to send this to the contact address at the top of the table (tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov) which was delayed 3 days and then bounced*. Shouldn't the tables be corrected to show the contact info for this list? *Actually, it seems that elsie.nci.nih.gov doesn't have an MX record (any more), so mailers attempt to connect to elsie directly to send mail, but it isn't listening (or won't connect). -- Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+TZ_IANA(a)Earthlink.net>

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Idaho tz correction
by OvV_HN May 22, 2012

May 22, 2012

In reply to: [tz] Idaho tz correction Ian Abbott abbotti at mev.co.uk Tue May 22 11:12:18 UTC 2012 .... I guess we'd want to change the comment for Southern Idaho (America/Boise) as well, replacing "the southern quarter of Idaho county" with "the part of Idaho county lying south of the Salmon River".) Though looking at the map, the river meanders a bit so that some of the portion described above as lying south of the Salmon River is actually north of part of the river and south of another part of the same river! Reply: The law says that the "main channel of the Salmon River" the boundary is. US Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49 (Transportation), Subtitle A (Office of the Secretary of Transportation), Part 71 (Standard Time Zone Boundaries). See paragraph 71.9. Oscar van Vlijmen

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Re: [tz] northamerica - Nevada - Mountain Time / Pacific Time
by Steve Jones May 22, 2012

May 22, 2012

At 20:27 5/21/2012, Tobias Conradi wrote: >More info the exceptions at: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackpot,_Nevada >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Wendover,_Nevada And <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owyhee,_Nevada>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owyhee,_Nevada. This image: www.discogs.com/Frank-Zappa-Sheik-Yerbouti/release/429613 demonstrates the local time zone border. The Nevada/Idaho state line is the official border, while the portion of the magenta that descends south into Nevada is the local unofficial observed time. Cheers, Steve Jones

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Re: [tz] northamerica - Nevada - Mountain Time / Pacific Time
by Steve Jones May 22, 2012

May 22, 2012

At 01:38 5/22/2012, Philip Newton wrote: >On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Steve Jones ><stevejones(a)ontimezone.com> wrote: > > This image: www.discogs.com/Frank-Zappa-Sheik-Yerbouti/release/429613 > > demonstrates the local time zone border. > >It does? Looks like a CD information page rather than an image to me. LOL and apologies... http://ontimezone.com/images/owyhee.gif That clipboard needs a DWIM (do what I mean) filter. Cheers, Steve Jones

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tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov -> tz at iana.org
by Tobias Conradi May 22, 2012

May 22, 2012

was "Idaho tz correction" On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 12:04 AM, Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+TZ_IANA(a)earthlink.net> wrote: ... > I attempted to send this to the contact address at the top of the table > (tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov) which was delayed 3 days and then bounced*. > Shouldn't the tables be corrected to show the contact info for this list? > > > *Actually, it seems that elsie.nci.nih.gov doesn't have an MX record (any > more), so mailers attempt to connect to elsie directly to send mail, but it > isn't listening (or won't connect). Tobias Conradi suggested a replacement already at 2012-05-01: http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2012-May/017654.html -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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northamerica - Nevada - Mountain Time / Pacific Time
by Tobias Conradi May 22, 2012

May 22, 2012

was "Idaho tz correction" On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 12:04 AM, Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+TZ_IANA(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > I see someone tried to address this last month but it kind of fell flat. The > solution seems clear to me, as described here: > >> In ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/data/northamerica v8.54 dated 2009-05-17 (the >> current version), it says" ... > If we wanted to give the same detail treatment to NV and OR: > > # US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles > # ... > # - Nevada (except for West Wendover) Alan, that would introduce inconsistency, since for Mountain time, represented by Denver it says "Nevada border (Jackpot, Owyhee, and Mountain City)" and then West Wendover wouldn't be covered anywhere. I suggest to keep "most of Nevada", but to amend the comments for the Nevada part that is on Mountain time, so the exceptions are only mentioned at one place. More info the exceptions at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackpot,_Nevada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Wendover,_Nevada -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Re: [tz] Bug in tzdata2012c/northamerica 2x Idaho County in America/Los_Angeles
by Steve Jones May 21, 2012

May 21, 2012

At 05:03 5/21/2012, Ian Abbott wrote: >Except that Idaho City is in Boise County, which is covered by a >different rule, so maybe it's not referring to Idaho City after >all. It all depends which rule covers Idaho City. > >So which rule covers Idaho City, America/Los_Angeles or America/Boise? > >Whichever rule it is, I guess the comment(s) could be improved. Here is an image that shows Idaho County, Idaho City, and a magenta line indicating the path of the time zone border in that area: <http://ontimezone.com/images/idahocounty.gif>http://ontimezone.com/images/idahocounty.gif It might be be more accurate to say "northeastern three-quarters of Idaho county", given the portion of the America/Boise rule which juts northwards to the west of the Salmon River. Cheers, Steve Jones

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Theory - proposal to delete the reference to population
by OvV_HN May 21, 2012

May 21, 2012

In reply to: [tz] Theory - proposal to delete the reference to population Tobias Conradi tobias.conradi at gmail.com Fri May 18 18:20:39 UTC 2012 http://home.tiscali.nl/~t876506/Multizones.html says "As soon as the territorial waters of a nation is reached, the clock is set to the local time of that (part of the) nation." Reply: Probably interesting to know: - What you referred to is my page (not interesting, but preliminary to the next). - The chapter about international waters is the result of a discussion on the TZ list a couple of years ago. So, that information is in fact peer reviewed. - The discussion was based on the renowned Bowditch publication The American Practical Navigator. In the chapter mentioned above a table and an algorithm can be found, that can be used to find a kinda logical time for an uninhabited zone. In my opinion: if an authority of an uninhabited island has defined a local time, the TZ database should have a zone designation, whether the island is uninhabited or not. The central place cannot be the largest inhabited place, but could be the geographic center of the island or a landmark of some kind (mountain top, abandoned station, etc.). The mere existence of an ISO code, a FIPS code, internet TLD, whatever, should be of no concern to TZ. Oscar van Vlijmen

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Re: [tz] Theory - proposal to delete the reference to population
by Tobias Conradi May 21, 2012

May 21, 2012

On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 1:46 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> wrote: > On 05/12/2012 04:08 AM, Tobias Conradi wrote: >> >> If two ships enter territorial waters of HM > > > They'll continue to do what they've always done, > which is keep their own times at the discretion > of their captains. Do you have any source, international treaty or so, to support your claim? If they get on land, would that change your claim, or would they observe what has been reported as official time for HM by Australian agencies? -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Bug in tzdata2012c/northamerica 2x Idaho County in America/Los_Angeles
by Tobias Conradi May 21, 2012

May 21, 2012

tzdata2012c/northamerica ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/data/northamerica https://github.com/valodzka/tzdata/blame/master/northamerica 2007-08-20 tzdata2007g https://github.com/valodzka/tzdata/commit/4cd595118d4f623edd792ec341ac1bd60… traced back to http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2007-August/014494.html Paul Eggert eggert at CS.UCLA.EDU Fri Aug 17 22:56:11 UTC 2007 -------cite------- # US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles ... # ... northern Idaho (Benewah,... # Idaho, ... , and Shoshone counties, # and the northern three-quarters of Idaho county) ... Zone America/Los_Angeles --------cite end----- -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Uzbekistan - insufficient location desciption
by Tobias Conradi May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012

tzdata2012c/asia no location comment except # Uzbekistan for Asia/Samarkand Asia/Tashkent Also no other comment, telling where the Uzbekistan info comes from. tzdata2012c/zone.tab Asia/Samarkand west Uzbekistan Asia/Tashkent east Uzbekistan No definition for "West Uzbekistan" or "East Uzbekistan" found. Trying to improve: Asia/Samarkand per definition includes Samarkand Province, where Samarkand is located. "west Uzbekistan" if only contrasted by "east Uzbekistan" and using the map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Uzbekistan likely additionally refers to Karakalpakstan, Xorazm, Buxoro, Navoiy Uncertain remain Jizzax (north east), Qashqadaryo (south) and Surxondaryo (south). But since the two southern country subdivisions, if looked at as one unit, border Samarkand, they may be included in Asia/Samarkand. This leaves five provinces, with Jizzax six, for the Asia/Tashkent. If that is the case zone.tab could be improve by Asia/Tashkent east Uzbekistan (Andijon, Fergana, Namangan, Tashkent, Sirdaryo [, Jizzax]) -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Theory - proposal to delete the reference to population
by Tobias Conradi May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012

References to population in tzcode2012b/Theory 1) "However, uninhabited ISO 3166 regions like Bouvet Island do not need locations, since local time is not defined there." 2) "Use UTC (with time zone abbreviation "zzz") for locations while uninhabited." ------- 1a) http://wikitravel.org/en/Bouvet_Island reports Olav Peak exists on Bouvet Island, without discussing a need for the peak. It is out of the scope of the tzdb as defined in the Theory file to decide on whether regions need locations. 1b) there is no definition of "uninhabited" German WP reports a team of people has been there after the 1970-01-01 cutoff point: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouvetinsel#cite_note-6 "Vom 24. Dezember 1978 bis zum 8. März 1979 hielt sich ein norwegisches Forschungsteam auf der Insel auf und führte biologische und geologische Forschungsarbeiten durch." There are more sources supporting the claim that it had been populated. 1c) There is no evidence that local time is not defined if a population is absent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukon-Koyukuk_Census_Area,_Alaska is mostly uninhabited but the whole area is observing UTC-09:00 according to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Timezoneswest.PNG maybe covered by America/Anchorage Alaska Time but no further geographic description found HM as no zone, but http://www.timegenie.com/country.time/hm "To ensure accuracy of information, timegenie.com contacted the Australian Antarctic Division [http://www.antarctica.gov.au/] . On January 3, 2005, a senior official confirmed that Heard Island and McDonald Islands are UTC/GMT +5 hours." 2a) A location changes its UTC offset when people move out or in? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Chamberlin_(Alaska) on UTC most of the year? A ship landing on an island, changes the UTC offset observed on that island? The time a meteorite lands on island depends on whether people have been there or not? 1+2) Violate tzcode2012b/Theory: ----- Scope of the tz database ----- The tz database attempts to record the history and predicted future of all computer-based clocks that track civil time. To represent this data, the world is partitioned into regions whose clocks all agree about time stamps that occur after the somewhat-arbitrary cutoff point of the POSIX Epoch (1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC). 1+2) Are inconsistently applied. Uninhabited locations are treated differently, depending on whether they are located in countries that have been inhabited during all time between 1970-01-01 and 2012-05-12 or not. If Bouvet Island would be part of TF, it could be included in a zone but since it is covered by BV it is not. -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Theory - typo - simplifes -> simplyfies
by Tobias Conradi May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012

tzcode2012b/Theory Indicate to humans as to where that region is. This simplifes use. simplifes -> simplyfies -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Infrastructure - ftp timestamps for .gz not showing creation time
by Tobias Conradi May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012

ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/releases/ failing to show the timestamps for archive creation time, showing 2011-10-13 00:00:00 instead until release of tzcode2011i.tar.gz and tzdata2011m.tar.gz inclusive. -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Terminology mismatch in tzcode file format manpage / header
by Andrew Paprocki May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012

The file format is described with these fields: .I tzh_ttisgmtcnt The number of UTC/local indicators stored in the file. .I tzh_ttisgmtcnt UTC/local indicators, each stored as a one-byte value; they tell whether the transition times associated with local time types were specified as UTC or local time, and are used when a time zone file is used in handling POSIX-style time zone environment variables. A number of variables in localtime.c, tzfile.h, and zic.c dealing with these fields have variations of this "isgmt" substring. This presents a naming conflict because technically GMT and UTC are two different things. I find the inconsistent naming creeping into functions which deal with the file format. I would like to prevent variations of the string "GMT" from winding up in API names since the definition of the field refers to UTC. I propose wholesale replacing of the "isgmt" substring in tzcode files with "isutc" so that the file format fields are named consistently with their definition. If absolutely necessary, a #define can be used in tzfile.h so that code referencing tzh_ttisgmtcnt will still compile. -Andrew

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Paul Eggert Confirmed by the IESG as the Time Zone Coordinator
by IETF Chair May 17, 2012

May 17, 2012

Dear TZ Community: I was just informed that the confirmation of Paul Eggert as the Time Zone Coordinator was never announced to this mail list. I am forwarding this note from the IESG Secretary to let everyone know that this happened over a month ago. Sorry for the announcement oversight. On behalf of the IESG, Russ Housley > From: IESG Secretary <iesg-secretary(a)ietf.org> > Date: April 13, 2012 4:15:36 PM EDT > To: iana(a)iana.org > Cc: iesg(a)ietf.org > Subject: Time Zone Coordinator > > IANA: > > The IESG has approved Paul Eggert (eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu) as the new Time Zone coordinator. > > Best regards, > IESG Secretary

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Re: [tz] Propose to improve where to find rules for "Indian/Kerguelen"
by SM May 16, 2012

May 16, 2012

At 23:30 15-05-2012, Mark Davis â wrote: >I firmly agree. Stability is far more important >than fiddling with the identifier names. Yes. >After all, the identifier names are really not >for human consumption; they need translation for >anything but English, and even for English need >some tweaking. And if people want to have >different groupings, that is easy to do. In >CLDR, for example, we group according to the >United Nations M.49 standard for continents and >subcontinents. (Cf >http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/territory_contain…) Some of the countries listed in Eastern Africa under M.49 are actually in another sub-continent in terms of political sub-continents. Greenland is part of North America and politically within Europe. Cyprus is categorized under Asia. If a rule of the thumb was needed, it could be to pick the continent where people in the region think they are. It avoids the "how many continents are there" question. Regards, -sm

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tz-announce Mailing List
by Kim Davies May 16, 2012

May 16, 2012

Dear all, We have established a new complimentary mailing list called tz-announce, which will be used solely for low-volume announcements of new editions of the tzdata or tzcode bundles, and other administration-related communications. This will allow those not interested in the detailed discussion relating to changes to have a method of getting announcements relating only to updates. Subscription information is at http://www.iana.org/time-zones kim

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Morocco Daylight Saving Time
by Mohamed Essedik Najd May 16, 2012

May 16, 2012

Good Morning Everyone; I am really glad that I have joined this mailing list. I just wanted to tell you that Morocco passed to DST during the last week end of April and this will remain active till the last weekend of September , with a suspension during Ramadan (Roughly between 20 July, 19 august, [Lunar Month, not sure yet]) If you can think of incorporating these changes during the new version of tzdata, our servers are suffering ! Regards -- *Mohamed Essedik Najd* Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Student Minor in Communication Studies Ifrane's Gtug Manager Google Student Ambassador Freelancer Phone: 00212 (0) 663 311 055 Google+ : http:/gplus.to/kensuke e-mail: es.najd(a)gmail.com website: http://kenix.info <http://blog.kenix.info/>

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Zones names - stability, translation, groupings, CLDR, find-ability
by Tobias Conradi May 16, 2012

May 16, 2012

was: [tz] Propose to improve where to find rules for "Indian/Kerguelen" On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 8:30 AM, Mark Davis ☕ <mark(a)macchiato.com> wrote: > I firmly agree. Stability is far more important than fiddling with the > identifier names. It's is documented practice of the tz project to "fiddle" with the "identifier names", if fiddling refers to changing them, and "identifier names" refers to zone names. Also different defining location are contained in one link in the backward file, e.g. ----- ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/data/backward ... # @(#)backward 8.11 ... # This file provides links between current names for time zones # and their old names. ... Link Africa/Bamako Africa/Timbuktu ----- Timbuktu is not an old name for the location Bamako. > After all, the identifier names are really not for human consumption; At least the tz project claims to attempt them to be: tzcode2012b/Theory "The time zone rule file naming conventions attempt to strike a balance among the following goals: * Indicate to humans as to where that region is. This simplifes use." > they > need translation for anything but English, America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires does not look as if it would "need" translation "for" Spanish. > And if people want to have > different groupings, that is easy to > do. Easy is relative. Even more "easy" would it be if there would be less desire to have different groupings. To do so the IANA tz project could follow international standards instead of using the current self-invented world partitioning system, e.g. "Australasia" along side "Asia", Bermuda in "Atlantic", Greenland in "America". > In CLDR, for example, we group according to the United Nations M.49 > standard for continents and subcontinents. > (Cf http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/territory_contain…) At least a try to match zones to an international standard continent model, but the document 1) is not monitorable by robots that respect robots.txt rules, e.g. the one from https://www.changedetection.com. http://unicode.org/robots.txt Disallow: /repos/cldr-tmp/ # dynamic 2) is out of date - zones are missing 3) has a n:m relationship for some cells in "Country (Territory)":"Time Zone" "Country (Territory)": Canary Islands [IC] Ceuta and Melilla [EA] map to one cell in "Time Zone" 4) has a n:m relationship for continent:zone, e.g. all zones matched to the "Subcontinent" element "Caribbean" are matched to three elements from the "Continent" column, namely to Americas 019, Latin America 419, and North America 003. 5) lists these seven "continents" as per the "Continent" column: Africa [002] Americas [019] Asia [142] Europe [150] Latin America [419] North America [003] Oceania [009] which form a set which is not used in any continent-model. Nor does it look very widespread to - have Latin America as continent at all, - omit in a full world model the continent Antarctica and to put the Antarctic Islands into Oceania. 6) contains names in the column headers which are not documented at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm, e.g. "Subcontinent" 7) contains unspecified names in the introduction, e.g. "CLDR supplements this table with the QO code for outlying areas". "QO code"? 8) doesn't specify which set of names is used for zone matching, it says: "As the last column, the timezone IDs for that country are listed." but "Asia/Kolkata" contained in zone.tab is not listed for India, instead "Asia/Calcutta" is which is not listed in zone.tab. Also the document doesn't name the last column close to what it claims to list, e.g. "timezone ID", instead it names the column "Time Zone". > And for programmers, grep or equivalent is fine. This is only true for the subset of programmers for which grep or equivalent is fine. It is not true for the others. -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Propose to improve where to find rules for "Indian/Kerguelen"
by Tobias Conradi May 16, 2012

May 16, 2012

tzdata2012c/zone.tab contains TF ... Indian/Kerguelen But there is no file "indian" in tzdata2012c as there are "europe", "africa", "asia" for zones named "Europe/...", "Africa/...", "Asia/..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#TF - French Southern Territories TF is territory of France. But even knowing that Russian Asia/...-zones are contained in "europe" does not help as analogy, since "europe" which hosts FR-France does not contain the string "indian". Propose - to document this in "Theory" or - in "zone.tab" or - to create a file "indian" -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Real bug in tzdata: Macquarie
by OvV_HN May 14, 2012

May 14, 2012

tzdata2000c: australasia file: " # Macquarie # permanent occupation (scientific station) since 1948; # sealing and penguin oil station operated 1888/1917 # like Australia/Hobart " antarctica file: " Zone Antarctica/Macquarie 0 - zzz 1911 ..... 11:00 - MIST # Macquarie Island Time " No big deal, since Macquarie now has its own timezone, different from Australia/Hobart, but the Australia comments in the australia file should possibly be updated as well. Oscar van Vlijmen

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Tz-announce list
by James Diebel May 13, 2012

May 13, 2012

Hello, I don't mean to harp on this issue but my previous email on the topic has seemed not to have gotten the attention of the person responsible for maintaining the mailing list. The fact is that through the excellent work of the contributors to this project, the tz database has become an essential component in a wide variety of computer systems. As such there is a large community of developers who need to know when new official versions of the database are released. And while I think that I speak for most of us in saying that we have the utmost respect and appreciation for the process that is used to vet proposed changes to the database, it is simply not sensible for all of us non-contributing users to sift through the various emails on the tz mailing list just so that we don't miss the one email in a thousand that marks a new release. When I last raised this, some people responded that if only certain contributors were banned that the problem would go away. I defer to the list administrators on the question of who should be banned from the list and respectfully disagree that that would solve the actual issue. The tz database is an extremely important project and the wide and timely dissemination of updates to the tz database are in the interest of all who use it, directly or indirectly. It should be a primary goal of the project to create systems for notifying users of the database of updates that are most likely to draw widespread use. Any number of unwanted emails reduces the appeal of staying on a given list. I propose the creation of a new list dedicated to announcements of new versions. The only person allowed to post to that list should be the same person that posts updates to the tz database itself. A single post should be posted to the new announcements list at the same time that an update is released. Such posts should be the only posts on that list. Existing subscribers to this list should be automatically added to the new list. Following that, an email to this list should inform non-contributing users that they may now safely unsubscribe from this list. I do not intend to reopen any discussions of banning any users. I cordially ask that those subscribers to the list that agree with my proposal respond saying so. And I respectfully ask whomever is responsible for maintaining the list to respond with comment. Thank you for your time and attention. Cheers, James Sent from a mobile device

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Two elements in list of assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes not contained in zone.tab
by Tobias Conradi May 12, 2012

May 12, 2012

To aid the discussion on how much extra work it is to map all currently assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes to at least one zone, I did: 1) import a) a list of ISO 3166-1 codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Officially_assigned_code_el… b) the list of ISO 3166-1 codes from tzdata2012c/zone.tab 2) performed the query SELECT DISTINCT(tz_zonelist.iso_3166_1), tz_countrylist.iso_3166_1 FROM tz_countrylist LEFT JOIN tz_zonelist ON tz_countrylist.iso_3166_1= tz_zonelist.iso_3166_1 ORDER BY `tz_zonelist`.`iso_3166_1` ASC 3) obtained the results iso_3166_1 iso_3166_1 NULL HM NULL BV AD AD ... That means the only ISO 3166-1 codes not mapped seem to be HM and BV. Any corrections welcome! -- Tobias Conradi Rheinsberger Str. 18 10115 Berlin Germany http://tobiasconradi.com/

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Missing entry for Heard Island and MacDonald Islands
by dfg dfg May 12, 2012

May 12, 2012

Hi everyone, I am a developer by trade, so I am not sure if I have stumbled onto some missing data in the tz database. I am accessing the database using PHP (www.php.net) which uses the latest version of the tz database (2012.3). I can use one of the built in functions to lookup timezone information for a given country using its ISO 3166-1 two letter country code (http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetimezone.listidentifiers.php) I am currently building an application and found that Heard Island and MacDonald Islands (ISO code HM) does not exist in the database. After a quick look at the tz data, I was also not able to find anything about Heard Island and MacDonald Island in the files. I believe that there should be an entry for Heard Island and MacDonald Islands (HM) which uses the timezone Australia/Perth. Is it possible that the entry was intentionally excluded for some reason? Or was it just missing from the database? Cheers,John

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