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Saskatchewan (2007)
by Chris Walton April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Over the past couple of months I have posted a number of e-mails related to Canadian time legislation. I never mentioned Saskatchewan because most of the province does not observe daylight saving time. There are actually two small regions in Saskatchewan that do use daylight saving time: 1)Lloydminster and surrounding area. 2)Creighton and Denare Beach area. Both of these regions are briefly mentioned in TZDATA's "northamerica" file. ################# The city of Lloydminster straddles the Alberta/Saskatchewan border. It uses MST/MDT. There is a special bit of legislation called the "Lloydminster Charter". The bylaws in the charter cover the entire city (both sides of the provincial border). Here are two URLs for the charter. Government of Alberta web site: http://www.qp.gov.ab.ca/Documents/REGS/1979_043.CFM Government of Saskatchewan web site: http://www.qp.gov.sk.ca/documents/english/Statutes/Historical/lloydchr.pdf Section 5(2) reads: ------------------------------------------------------------------ "Whenever any particular time of day is referred to in this Charter, the same shall mean Mountain Standard Time except that in every year during the period between two o'clock in the forenoon of the first Sunday in April and two o'clock in the forenoon of the last Sunday in October it shall mean Central Standard Time." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Since Lloydminster has traditionally followed the daylight savings practices of Alberta, I assume that the charter will have to be updated for 2007. ################# The Battle River region surrounding the city of Lloydminster uses the same time as Lloydminster. Presumably the bylaws in the Lloydminster Charter don't apply outside the city limits. So the region surrounding Lloydminster on the east side of the provincial border is subject to the rules in the Saskatchewan Time Act. The Saskatchewan Time Act defines time for all regions of the province except the city of Lloydminster. The Act allows the rules in western parts of the province to be overridden by public election. http://www.qp.gov.sk.ca/documents/english/statutes/statutes/t14.pdf Several sections of the act are of interest: ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2(i) "summer period means that period in each year beginning at two o'clock, mountain standard time, in the forenoon of the first Sunday in April and ending at two o'clock, mountain standard time, in the forenoon of the last Sunday in October;" --------------------------------------------------------------- "Non-application of Act 5 Nothing in this Act applies to a reference to time in: (a) The Lloydminster Charter; or"... --------------------------------------------------------------- "Time in certain areas of western Saskatchewan 8(1) The time to be used and observed in western Saskatchewan: (a) during the summer period, is central standard time; and (b) during the winter period, is mountain standard time, except in respect of any time option area where central standard time is decided upon by a majority of the electors of the time option area voting with respect thereto under this Act whose ballots are not rejected. (2) Notwithstanding subsection (1), on and from the commencement of the winter period in 1983 and until a vote is taken in accordance with this Act, the time to be used and observed: (a) in the Battle River Time Option Area: (i) during the summer period, is central standard time; and (ii) during the winter period, is mountain standard time; and (b) throughout the year in the Paynton Time Option Area is central standard time." --------------------------------------------------------------------- Notice that the transition from daylight time to standard time is supposed to take place at 2:00am MST (3:00MDT). This is one hour after the transition defined in the Lloydminster charter. Therefore, the area surrounding Lloydminster on the east side of the provincial border should be out of sync with Lloydminster for one hour each year. Ugh! Doesn't this call for a new time zone for a region that probably has no more than 2 or 3 thousand residents. Maybe we just have to ignore the Time Act. The NRC seems to have ignored it. The INMS-NRC site says: "Areas around Lloydminster are in the Mountain Time zone and change at 2:00a.m. local time as in Alberta" http://inms-ienm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/en/faq_time_e.php#5 ################ And finally there is the small area that contains the towns of Creighton and Denare Beach. This region uses CST/CDT to align with the city of Flin Flon Manitoba. The use of daylight saving time in this region is in defiance of the Saskatchewan Time Act. Should we stop and ponder what time Creighton and Denare Beach have historically done the transition from daylight time to standard time? Is it: a) 2:00am wall time as is tradition in most parts of the country or b) 02:00 CST (3:00am wall time) as per the old Manitoba Time Act or c) 02:00 MST (4:00am wall time) as per the definition of "summer time" in the Saskatchewan Time Act? or d) 8:07am wall time because we can't expect non-law-abiding citizens get up in the middle of the night to change the clocks. It will be interesting to see if the Saskatchewan government bothers to update the Time Act to reflect the extra four weeks of daylight savings in 2007. Personally I think that the all fourteen pages of the old act should be burned and replaced with something more concise. But that is just my opinion. I will keep an eye out for new legislation and I will post an e-mail to this group if I see anything. -chris

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Re: Wisconsin's variation of CDT
by Paul Eggert April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Robert Elz <kre(a)munnari.oz.au> writes: > Do you really believe that almost anyone (members of this list perhaps > excepted) actually changes their clock at the precise instant that DST > (or summer time, or whatever it gets called in different areas) > actually changes. Yes, I do. Many people in this country no longer use watches; they use cell phones to tell time. And cell phones did change at 02:00 in Wisconsin on April 2; see <http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=58272>. I myself prefer an old-fashioned pocket watch, but I've observed that my students, whose ages are typically around 20, use cell phones or laptops to tell time just as often as they use watches -- perhaps even more so. Sales of cheap watches reportedly declined 10% last year in the US, most likely due to the popularity of telling time by cell phone; see <http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD0…>. I imagine that people who have to log times (nurses, doctors, police officers, and fire departments, for example) make sure their clocks are close to the consensus time. These days no doubt a lot of this is automated (mostly by our work, by Microsoft's, and by the cell phone companies') but that still counts. I did consult some sources in Wisconsin for what people actually do, and they agreed that 02:00 was the time people switched. See, for example, Bob Petrie, Locals prepare to lose sleep, gain daylight, Sheboygan Press (2006-04-01) <http://www.htrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060401/SHE0101/60401050…> > More likely to be relevant would be what time the radio stations > announce during the "different" hour I'd be surprised if radio-station time announcements in Wisconsin differed materially from the federal daylight-saving rules.

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Zhe Su April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Hi, As I mentioned, according to the data of 2005, the resident population of Beijing is about 13.8 million, Shanghai is about 13.4 million. The natural growth rate of Beijing resident population is about 0.1% (2005 is 0.07%), (data from http://www.bj.xinhuanet.com/bjpd_sdzx/2005-12/06/content_5751145.htm) While, the natural growth rate of Shanghai resident population is -0.03% (2005) and has been kept nagative for 8 years. (data from http://www.happyhome.net.cn/read.asp?subjectid=212&infoid=1452&forumid=14117) Though, the growth rate of floating population of both cities are very high. More and more people come to Beijing and Shanghai from other provinces for work. Regards James Su On 4/28/06, Robert Elz <kre(a)munnari.oz.au> wrote: > Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:02:16 +0800 > From: "Zhe Su" <james.su(a)gmail.com> > Message-ID: > <278a3d0604272202t58aa5802nf0b11c63bfe110bb(a)mail.gmail.com> > > | Following this rule, "Asia/Beijing" should be used instead of > | "Asia/Shanghai", because more people prefer "Asia/Beijing" in China, > | as Beijing has more people than Shanghai :-) > > If the population of Beijing is greater than that of Shanghai then > you're right, the zone name should be changed (with the old one left > as an alias for a while for people who are used to it). It would > not be the first time that names have changed for this reason (when > relative populations of different cities alters). > > Of course, if it is a close thing, and it is possible that Shanghai > may overtake Beijing again next year (or something) then keeping > switching backwards and forwards would be irrational - so just keeping > things stable should be better, but if (which I would certainly > imagine is possible) that Beijing is simply growing faster than > Shanghai and has now grown bigger, the zone name can change. > > kre >

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Robert Elz April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:02:16 +0800 From: "Zhe Su" <james.su(a)gmail.com> Message-ID: <278a3d0604272202t58aa5802nf0b11c63bfe110bb(a)mail.gmail.com> | Following this rule, "Asia/Beijing" should be used instead of | "Asia/Shanghai", because more people prefer "Asia/Beijing" in China, | as Beijing has more people than Shanghai :-) If the population of Beijing is greater than that of Shanghai then you're right, the zone name should be changed (with the old one left as an alias for a while for people who are used to it). It would not be the first time that names have changed for this reason (when relative populations of different cities alters). Of course, if it is a close thing, and it is possible that Shanghai may overtake Beijing again next year (or something) then keeping switching backwards and forwards would be irrational - so just keeping things stable should be better, but if (which I would certainly imagine is possible) that Beijing is simply growing faster than Shanghai and has now grown bigger, the zone name can change. kre

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Zhe Su April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Hi, That's not true. According the data from "National Population and Family Commission of China", last year, Shanghai has 13.4 million resident population, while Beijing has 13.8 million resident population. At the same time, Shanghai has about 5.8 floating population, Beijing has about 3 million floating population. So, Beijing has more resident population than Shanghai, though the total population is less. The data from: Shanghai: http://www.chinapop.gov.cn/rkxx/rkxw/t20060406_58076.htm Beijing: http://www.gjjsw.gov.cn/rkzh/zgrk/tjgb/t20040326_2833.htm (Sorry, they are in Chinese) Both for 2005 year. Regards James Su On 4/28/06, David Keegel <djk(a)cybersource.com.au> wrote: > My research on google suggests Beijing is about 15 million population, > and Shanghai is about 18-20 million. > > On Fri, Apr 28, 2006 at 01:02:16PM +0800, Zhe Su wrote: > > Hi, > > Following this rule, "Asia/Beijing" should be used instead of > > "Asia/Shanghai", because more people prefer "Asia/Beijing" in China, > > as Beijing has more people than Shanghai :-) > > > > Regards > > James Su > > -- > ______________________________________________________________________ > _____ David Keegel <djk(a)cybersource.com.au> > http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/ > Cybersource P/L: Linux/Unix Systems Administration > Consulting/Contracting >

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Zhe Su April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Hi, Following this rule, "Asia/Beijing" should be used instead of "Asia/Shanghai", because more people prefer "Asia/Beijing" in China, as Beijing has more people than Shanghai :-) Regards James Su On 4/28/06, Robert Elz <kre(a)munnari.oz.au> wrote: > Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:54:12 -0400 > From: John Hawkinson <jhawk(a)MIT.EDU> > Message-ID: <20060428025412.GN677(a)multics.mit.edu> > > | I can't say I see quite why it is such a bad thing to make exceptions > | in the uniform policy where they are clearly understandable and > | preferred by most people... I'm skeptical of claims of > | non-scalability. > > The scalability that matters isn't what the zoneinfo files can handle, > but what this mailing list can handle. > > Having a simple rule that always gets followed allows us to ignore > endless arguments about what is, or is not, "preferred by most > people", and how anyone could ever really tell (when that argument is > made, 99% of the time, it means "I prefer".) > > Of course, we still periodically get this discussion - but at least > there's just one of this one, and not the many "this name is better than that name" > for any arbitrary name. > > kre >

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FW: FW: Timezone file asia
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

K. Sethu is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado ________________________________ From: K Sethu [mailto:skhome@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:17 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Fwd: FW: Timezone file asia On request of Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> I am forwarding to tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov herewith my email to Paul Eggert and Nimal Ratnayake. Furhter Nimal's first message, Paul's response to it and Paul's response to my following message are also copied in that order for reference below the following forwarded message K. Sethu ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: K Sethu <skhome(a)gmail.com> Date: Apr 25, 2006 11:12 AM Subject: Re: FW: Timezone file asia To: Paul Eggert < eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> Cc: Nimal Ratnayake <nimalr(a)pdn.ac.lk> On 4/25/06, Paul Eggert < eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu <mailto:eggert@cs.ucla.edu> > wrote: > Nimal Ratnayake <nimalr(a)pdn.ac.lk> writes: > > > Actually although the time offset is the same as IST, we call it Sri > > Lanka Time. > > I am tryinng to get some authoritative info from organizations like > > the Meteorological > > Department, Sri Lanka Standards Institute or ICT Agency of the government. > > Thanks. I'm also interested as to when this name came into common use. > > (Presumably it was not called "Sri Lanka Time" back in 1920. :-) > I think the abbreviation LKT originated from the world of computers at the time of or subsequent to the time zone changes by SL Government twice in 1996 and probably SL Government or its standardization /ict agencies never decalred an abbreviation as national standard. I recollect before the recent change the government annoucemments mentioning it as simply changing Sri Lanka Standard Time or Sri Lanka Time and no mention was made about the abbreviation. If we look at Sri Lanka Department of Government's "Official News Website of Sri Lanka" - for current page at http://www.news.lk/ we can see that they use SLT as abbreviation in time stamp at the beginning of each news item - for example: Tuesday 25-04-2006 SLT 09:30 (+05:30 GMT). For an example before the recent change, look at: http://www.news.lk/news_2006_04_072.htm - this has the news item on cabinet decision for changing of time and the time stamp then was Friday 07-04-2006 SLT 06:30 (+06:00 GMT). So question arises whether SLT was at any time adopted as standard abbreviation by the government. Within Sri Lanka I think LKT is well known among computer users and adminsitrators. In my opinion SLT may not be a good choice because the nation's largest telcom / internet operator Sri Lanka Telcom is well known by that abbreviation - simply as SLT (there IP domains are slt.lk and sltnet.lk ). But if indeed our government has adopted SLT as standard abbreviation (that we have not known so far) then it is better that it be used for all computers. Hope Nimal gets more authoratative information in his investigations ~Sethu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - Previous messages> From: Nimal Ratnayake <nimalr(a)pdn.ac.lk > Mailed-By: pdn.ac.lk To: Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> Cc: K Sethu <skhome(a)gmail.com > Date: Apr 24, 2006 9:44 PM Subject: Re: FW: Timezone file asia Hi, >It was "IST" from 1906 (when Colombo switched from Moratuwa Mean Time >to India time) through 1996 (when Colombo switched away from India >time), so I thought, it more consistent to revert back to the old >abbreviation. > >But perhaps this isn't correct. What do English-speaking people >typically say when they want to talk about the time zone used in >Colombo nowadays? If they say "Sri Lanka time" then LKT would be more >appropriate. > >One possibility is that we wait for a bit for the dust to settle down >and then see what people actually say in practice. > > > Actually although the time offset is the same as IST, we call it Sri Lanka Time. I am tryinng to get some authoritative info from organizations like the Meteorological Department, Sri Lanka Standards Institute or ICT Agency of the government. >While we're on the subject of Sri Lanka time, Peter Apps and Ranga >Sirilal reported on April 12 that the Tamil Tigers "never accepted the >original 1996 time change and simply kept their clocks set five and a >half hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in line with neighbor >India." See >< http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyI D=2006-04-12T172228Z_01_COL295762_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-SRILANKA-TIME-DC.XML <http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&story ID=2006-04-12T172228Z_01_COL295762_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-SRILANKA-TIME-DC.XM L> >. >They also report that Buddhist temples and astrologers' offices stuck >with India time, but that's of less importance to us, since we focus >on civil time. > >As luck would have it, though, people who live in regions under Tamil >control (or who live in Buddhist temples etc.) can simply use >TZ='Asia/Calcutta', as that zone has been correct for these regions >since our cutoff date of 1970. However, I suppose I should add a >comment to this effect in the Sri Lanka part of the database. > > > Yes. I think that would be appropriate. Nimal Ratnayake -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu > Mailed-By: cs.ucla.edu To: Nimal Ratnayake <nimalr(a)pdn.ac.lk> Cc: K Sethu <skhome(a)gmail.com > Date: Apr 25, 2006 1:12 AM Subject: Re: FW: Timezone file asia Nimal Ratnayake <nimalr(a)pdn.ac.lk> writes: > Actually although the time offset is the same as IST, we call it Sri > Lanka Time. > I am tryinng to get some authoritative info from organizations like > the Meteorological > Department, Sri Lanka Standards Institute or ICT Agency of the government. Thanks. I'm also interested as to when this name came into common use. (Presumably it was not called "Sri Lanka Time" back in 1920. :-) --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> Mailed-By: cs.ucla.edu To: K Sethu <skhome(a)gmail.com> Cc: Nimal Ratnayake <nimalr(a)pdn.ac.lk> Date: Apr 25, 2006 5:40 PM Subject: Re: FW: Timezone file asia "K Sethu" < skhome(a)gmail.com> writes: > Within Sri Lanka I think LKT is well known among computer users and > adminsitrators. In my opinion SLT may not be a good choice because the > nation's largest telcom / internet operator Sri Lanka Telcom is well > known by that abbreviation - simply as SLT (there IP domains are > slt.lk <http://slt.lk/> and sltnet.lk <http://sltnet.lk/> ). > > But if indeed our government has adopted SLT as standard abbreviation > (that we have not known so far) then it is better that it be used for > all computers. Thanks for your discussion; it has convinced me to use either LKT or SLT in the next update. Could you please send a copy of your email to < tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov>? Thanks. > Hope Nimal gets more authoratative information in his > investigations Yes, I'd also like to know about SLT versus LKT. Thanks.

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Robert Elz April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:54:12 -0400 From: John Hawkinson <jhawk(a)MIT.EDU> Message-ID: <20060428025412.GN677(a)multics.mit.edu> | I can't say I see quite why it is such a bad thing to make exceptions | in the uniform policy where they are clearly understandable and | preferred by most people... I'm skeptical of claims of | non-scalability. The scalability that matters isn't what the zoneinfo files can handle, but what this mailing list can handle. Having a simple rule that always gets followed allows us to ignore endless arguments about what is, or is not, "preferred by most people", and how anyone could ever really tell (when that argument is made, 99% of the time, it means "I prefer".) Of course, we still periodically get this discussion - but at least there's just one of this one, and not the many "this name is better than that name" for any arbitrary name. kre

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by Zhe Su April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

Hi, I don't think modifying front ends is a resonable way for us. Those front ends are out of our control, there is no way for us to convince them to change their front ends. Even if we could convince some of them, it's impossible for us to know and convince all front ends which use tzdata in the world. The simplest way for us is to convince you to modify tzdata, so that all available front ends can benefit from it. Regards James Su On 4/22/06, Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> wrote: > "Zhe Su" <james.su(a)gmail.com> writes: > > > Unfortunately, most front ends (at least on GNU/Linux system) > > expose timezone identifiers like "Asia/Shanghai" to end users directly. > > Then let's focus on getting those front ends fixed the way you like. > > Which front ends are they? The tz code ships only one front end, > called tzselect, which works as shown at the end of this message. > Note that at the crucial decision point, the user selects a #1 entry > labeled "Beijing". So at least this front end works the way that you > like. Perhaps all you need to do is to convince your distributors to > switch to tzselect. Another possibility is for you to find out which > front ends people are using, and fix those front ends. > > $ tzselect > Please identify a location so that time zone rules can be set correctly. > Please select a continent or ocean. > 1) Africa > 2) Americas > 3) Antarctica > 4) Arctic Ocean > 5) Asia > 6) Atlantic Ocean > 7) Australia > 8) Europe > 9) Indian Ocean > 10) Pacific Ocean > 11) none - I want to specify the time zone using the Posix TZ format. > #? 5 > Please select a country. > 1) Afghanistan 18) Israel 35) Palestine > 2) Armenia 19) Japan 36) Philippines > 3) Azerbaijan 20) Jordan 37) Qatar > 4) Bahrain 21) Kazakhstan 38) Russia > 5) Bangladesh 22) Korea (North) 39) Saudi Arabia > 6) Bhutan 23) Korea (South) 40) Singapore > 7) Brunei 24) Kuwait 41) Sri Lanka > 8) Cambodia 25) Kyrgyzstan 42) Syria > 9) China 26) Laos 43) Taiwan > 10) Cyprus 27) Lebanon 44) Tajikistan > 11) East Timor 28) Macau 45) Thailand > 12) Georgia 29) Malaysia 46) Turkmenistan > 13) Hong Kong 30) Mongolia 47) United Arab Emirates > 14) India 31) Myanmar (Burma) 48) Uzbekistan > 15) Indonesia 32) Nepal 49) Vietnam > 16) Iran 33) Oman 50) Yemen > 17) Iraq 34) Pakistan > #? 9 > Please select one of the following time zone regions. > 1) east China - Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, etc. > 2) Heilongjiang > 3) central China - Gansu, Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan, etc. > 4) Tibet & most of Xinjiang Uyghur > 5) southwest Xinjiang Uyghur > #? 1 > > The following information has been given: > > China > east China - Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, etc. > > Therefore TZ='Asia/Shanghai' will be used. > Local time is now: Sat Apr 22 01:03:53 CST 2006. > Universal Time is now: Fri Apr 21 17:03:53 UTC 2006. > Is the above information OK? > 1) Yes > 2) No > #? 1 > > You can make this change permanent for yourself by appending the line > TZ='Asia/Shanghai'; export TZ > to the file '.profile' in your home directory; then log out and log in again. > > Here is that TZ value again, this time on standard output so that you > can use the ./tzselect command in shell scripts: > Asia/Shanghai > > >

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Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
by John Hawkinson April 27, 2006

April 27, 2006

[ Hmm. This is a bit dated, I guess. ] Paul Eggert <eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu> wrote on Fri, 21 Apr 2006 at 10:07:38 -0700 in <877j5ix3fp.fsf(a)penguin.cs.ucla.edu>: > "Zhe Su" <james.su(a)gmail.com> writes: > > > Unfortunately, most front ends (at least on GNU/Linux system) > > expose timezone identifiers like "Asia/Shanghai" to end users directly. > > Then let's focus on getting those front ends fixed the way you like. It seems like this is a bit naive. Users encounter the $TZ environment variable if they are doing something "out of the ordinary." Users encounter the timezone in the filesystem (/etc/localtime symlinks). But perhaps, most keenly, it is those time geeks who pay close attention to the zone (and manipulate it) who are ticked off (ha ha) by things like Asia/Shanghai, or America/New_York. Somehow, I kind of doubt tzselect will ever solve this. I can't say I see quite why it is such a bad thing to make exceptions in the uniform policy where they are clearly understandable and preferred by most people... I'm skeptical of claims of non-scalability. --jhawk

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