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Alternative place names?
by Oscar van Vlijmen Oct. 4, 2000

Oct. 4, 2000

> Jesper Nørgaard / Vietnam: Saigon vs. Ha Noi. > David Keegel / Theory file. > Gwillim Law / Theory file. > Vadim Vygonets / Saigon vs. Ha Noi and Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv. > Paul Eggert / Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv. > Gwillim Law / I think it's fine to put > alternative place names into the comments, but I hope we'll resist making > frequent changes to the zone names. One of the TZ prescriptions is: "Use the most populous among locations in a country's time zone, e.g. prefer `Shanghai' to `Beijing'. Among locations with similar populations, pick the best-known location, e.g. prefer `Rome' to `Milan'." The rationale of the 11 Theory prescriptions is of course: The user has to be able to find the wanted timezone immediately. I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. A capital is or should be known to everybody. Haven't we all had some kind of geography lessons, years or decades ago? If in a TZ application the end user is able to see the commented alternative names, then in some cases alternatives should be mentioned in the data files. If not, mentioning alternatives still could be useful to the developers of Windows, Macintosh and web derivatives of the TZ application. > Paul Eggert, Vadim Vygonets, Antoine Leca / China: Chongqing A recurring problem is that people inside and outside of China don't like the official pinyin transliteration. Most professional map makers however use pinyin. Officially (Peking University course) the q- sound is an aspirated voiceless affricate, with j- the unaspirated voiceless counterpart. In practice j- sounds more like the (voiced!) g- in English genuine and q- more like the ch- in English chew. How Chongqing is pronounced in Chongqing I do not know. What I do know is that Chongqing is the official pinyin transliteration. Chung is a British transliteration (Wade, 1867), indeed: tch'ong is the French EFEO (1902) transliteration, but k'ing is the French transliteration for pinyin qing, whereas ch'ing would be the British transliteration. I'll vote for pinyin Chongqing. > Antoine Leca / Cambodia: Phnum Penh There is a (Unicode) "Proposal for encoding the Khmer script", by Maurice Bauhahn, a proposal to ISO-IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. This is not a Romanization proposal, but in this document I found a reference to: American Library Association - Library of Congress romanization tables: transliteration schemes for non-Roman scripts approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, Randall K. Barry, ed. 1997, isbn 0844409405. Who has access to these tables? See also the ISO/TC46/SC2 working groups for international transliteration standards (http://www.elot.gr/tc46sc2/) I suggest: Phnom_Penh as zone name, Phnum Penh in comment. > Gwillim Law / Do not change established names unless they become ambiguous or > shockingly incorrect. Yes, but established by whom? And what would you call shockingly incorrect? To some people it's shockingly incorrect to say Kirgizstan instead of Kyrgyzstan, but a certain influential publication or whoever 'established' an alternative transliteration. Where to draw the line? > Vadim Vygonets / Kirgizstan BTW: Kyrgyz is not a Russian (Slavonic) language, but a Turkic language, and -i- and -y- indeed do sound different. > Paul Eggert / Hong Kong, Macao, Harbin, Urumqi, Kashgar. I'll vote for these as zone names; one could put more or less common or official alternatives in comments. Alternatives to Kashgar: Kaxgar, Kashi. Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-27

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RE: week starts at Sunday or Monday??
by Rich Wales Oct. 4, 2000

Oct. 4, 2000

"Jake" wrote: > "and on the seventh day, ye shall rest" for Gregorian > calendar = Sunday, for Hebraic, Seventh Day Adventists > (and others) = Saturday, etc. In the mainline Christian tradition, the day of worship was changed to the first day of the week in order to commemorate Jesus' resurrection. So, even though Sunday is the generally accepted Christian day of rest, it is still considered to be the first (not seventh) day of the week. Rich Wales richw(a)webcom.com http://www.webcom.com/richw/

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Capitals
by Oscar van Vlijmen Oct. 4, 2000

Oct. 4, 2000

> Garrett Wollman: > Many time-zone regions do not have a `capital' of any sort. To give > just one example, the time zone `America/Los_Angeles' has three > `capitals': Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia. None of these are obvious > choices. `America/Chicago' has even more possibilities. Dunno, the book "The world almanac and book of facts", World Almanac Books, 1998, gives on page 542 a list of US state capitals with Sacramento as the only capital of California, Springfield (not Chicago) as capital of Illinois, etcetera. Good maps will also show the one and only capital of states. For US states with 2 or more timezones, one could use the most populous county seats or courthouses. For instance, Indiana has 92 counties to choose from (ibid, page 424). The same information can be found (elsewhere) for Canada. But I think it's a bit futile to rework the whole tz database only for the sake of being administratively correct. Here and there a couple of obvious corrections won't hurt. But one may have a different opinion. Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-28

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Time zone changes due to Brazilian Summer Time
by Paulo Alexandre Pinto Pires Oct. 4, 2000

Oct. 4, 2000

Dear sirs, Below are the patches (with full comments) for adjusting zone information for South America, due to Brazilian changing of beginning and ending dates for adoption of summer time. Patches can be applied to version 7.36 (as available from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov at 2000/10/04 00:00 GMT), and they are in unified diff format. I am also sending the full altered file, as a GNU-zip compressed attachment. Regards, Paulo A. P. Pires -- p(a)ppires.org 8<---------------------------------------------- --- /usr/src/share/zoneinfo/southamerica.orig Tue Oct 3 22:03:37 2000 +++ /usr/src/share/zoneinfo/southamerica Tue Oct 3 23:06:56 2000 @@ -367,8 +367,23 @@ # adds SE, AL, PE, PR, RN, CE, PI, MA and RR. # These give only one year's rules. After that, the rules are guesses # and are quite possibly wrong, but are more likely than no DST at all. -Rule Brazil 1999 max - Oct Sun>=1 0:00 1:00 S -Rule Brazil 2000 max - Feb lastSun 0:00 0 - +Rule Brazil 1999 only - Oct Sun>=1 0:00 1:00 S +Rule Brazil 2000 only - Feb lastSun 0:00 0 - +# +# From Paulo A. P. Pires (2000-10-03) +# Brazil changed rules once again. Late decree with poor announcement +# (even some telephone companies had their services one hour ahead of legal +# for a short time). +# According to sources in the Research Group on Energy, from the Institute of +# Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, initial and final +# summer time dates were not originally supposed to change from previous year, +# but people in northern states don't like summer time (for the obvious reason +# that is not as effective, but rather uncomfortable, near the Equator line). +# Decree <a href="http://pcdsh01.on.br/DEC3592.htm">3592</A> (2000/09/06) lists +# the following states to obey summer time: RS, SC, PR, SP, RJ, ES, MG, GO, +# MT, MS, TO, BA, SE, AL, PE, RN, CE, PI, MA, RR and DF. +Rule Brazil 2000 max - Oct Sun>=8 0:00 1:00 S +Rule Brazil 2001 max - Feb Sun>=18 0:00 0 - # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] ------------------------------------------->8 -- Pappires ... Qui habet aurem audiendi audiat quid Spiritus dicat ecclesiis.

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Patch for Brazil Summer Time 2000.
by Marcus Felipe Pereira Oct. 3, 2000

Oct. 3, 2000

Hi Arthur, Brazil's government changed the rules for the Daylight Summer Time - AGAIN! They changed the start date of it from "Fist Sunday of October" to "Second Sunday or October". So in 2000 the BRST will start on 8th of October an not in 1st of October. I'm sending a patch for the original "southamerica" timezone file from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2000f.tar.gz Marcus Felipe Pereira marcus(a)task.com.br

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Re: Alternative place names?
by Paul Eggert Oct. 3, 2000

Oct. 3, 2000

Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen(a)tip.nl> writes: > I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population > count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. Actually, capitals change suprisingly often. E.g. Kazakhstan changed its capital in 1997, and then changed the capital's name in 1998. (Good thing they didn't use new time zone rules too, or we'd have had to track that mess.) Even China, the most populous country in the world, changed its capital twice in the last century (in 1928 and again in 1949) and there was a period in which the location of its capital was in serious dispute. Capitals are political creatures, and we are trying to avoid politics here as much as possible, so I don't want to give the "capitalness" of a city much weight. > Chung is a British transliteration (Wade, 1867), indeed: tch'ong is the > French EFEO (1902) transliteration, but k'ing is the French transliteration > for pinyin qing, whereas ch'ing would be the British transliteration. The name "Chungking" is not a systematic transliteration; it is merely traditional. It's probably the weakest of the existing Chinese names, i.e. the one where there is the strongest reason to change, as I get the feeling that the Pinyin transliteration "Chongqing" is gaining wide popularity in ordinary English usage. Google reports 38k English-language hits for "Chongqing" and 21k for "Chungking", so if we were choosing now "Chongqing" might well be the winner. But I'm not sure that this is enough to change an established name. Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen(a)tip.nl> writes: Paul Hill writes: > Someone said there is the rule: every country gets at least one entry. > Is this implemented in practice? Every country including all small > countries that share zones (like the Caribbean)? Yes. In hindsight this rule was probably unwise, as countries are also political creatures. Not sure I want to change it now, though.

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Re: week starts at Sunday or Monday??
by Janis.Papanagnou＠varetis.de Oct. 3, 2000

Oct. 3, 2000

>so my question is.... >now that I decided that days are niumbere 1 to 7, >what is day 1 ??? >is it Sunday, or Monday? >what is the Right Thing to do? Your choice is ok. One observation to add is about numbering/enumerating/counting in general: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, ... well - I've never heard about "the 0-st". Enumerating starting with zero seems to have come in vogue with C, due to the simpler address calculation (saves some micro seconds?). Whether week starts with Monday or Sunday depends on the culture; this is independent of any number assigned to it. Regards, Janis

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Paraguay change
by Steffen Thorsen Oct. 2, 2000

Oct. 2, 2000

I have three independent reports that Paraguay (America/Asuncion) changed to DST this Sunday (1 Oct), so the "Para"-rules must be updated. Also, Brazil needs to be updated, like already reported by several people on this list. Best regards, Steffen -- Steffen Thorsen <steffen(a)thorsen.priv.no> <steffent(a)pvv.ntnu.no> http://www.thorsen.priv.no

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Re: week starts at Sunday or Monday??
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl Oct. 2, 2000

Oct. 2, 2000

> > 1st, 2nd, 3rd, ... well - I've never heard about "the 0-st". > > Enumerating starting with zero seems to have come in vogue with C, > There's been a Zero Church Street in Cambridge, Mass., for a good deal > longer than there's been a C programming language. Blame the > mathematicians. The Indian calendars use a large number of counting years. Some of those start with 0, others with 1. This even predates Cambridge, Mass.. dik

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Re: week starts at Sunday or Monday??
by Peter Ilieve Oct. 2, 2000

Oct. 2, 2000

Christoph Bugel wrote: > > so my question is.... > now that I decided that days are niumbere 1 to 7, > what is day 1 ??? > is it Sunday, or Monday? > what is the Right Thing to do? The document by Gary Houston describing the ISO 8601:1988 date/time representations that is available at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/iso8601.ps.gz contains this paragraph: An ordinal date is identified by a given day in a given year. A week is identified by its number in a given year. A week begins with a Monday, and the first week of a year is the one which includes the first Thursday, or equivalently the one which includes January 4. Midnight may be expressed as either 00:00:00 or 24:00:00. Peter Ilieve peter(a)aldie.co.uk

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share/zoneinfo/southamerica (Brazil saving update)
by Mario Sergio Fujikawa Ferreira Oct. 1, 2000

Oct. 1, 2000

Hi, I was informed this was the right place to inform this. If you are not, I both apologize and ask if you can direct this to the right person. I would like to report that the Light Time Saving estimates for Brazil are incorrect. The new correct time savings for this year are - begin 08 Oct 2000 00:00:00 - end 18 Feb 2001 00:00:00 Unfortunaly, it is not clear if the 2nd weekend of September will be the official beginning for consequent years. The same applies for the end date. Therefore, I would advise maintaining the actual policy, yet adding this year's information. By the way, no states were removed or added in this latest decree. --- southamerica Fri Apr 7 01:20:30 2000 +++ /tmp/southamerica Sun Oct 1 02:02:25 2000 @@ -353,6 +353,10 @@ # and are quite possibly wrong, but are more likely than no DST at all. Rule Brazil 1999 max - Oct Sun>=1 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2000 max - Feb lastSun 0:00 0 - +# Decree <a href="http://pcdsh01.on.br/DEC3592.htm">3,592</a> (1999-10-01) +# adopted by the same states. +Rule Brazil 2000 only - Oct 6 0:00 1:00 S +Rule Brazil 2001 only - Feb 18 0:00 0 - # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] -- Mario S. F. Ferreira - UnB - Brazil - "I guess this is a signature." lioux at ( freebsd dot org | linf dot unb dot br ) flames to beloved devnull(a)someotherworldbeloworabove.org

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places: links
by Oscar van Vlijmen Oct. 1, 2000

Oct. 1, 2000

A couple of links for those who are still interested in places, in spite of past discussions ;) Jesper Nørgaard gave earlier: UN list of capital cities and cities of 100,000 inhabitants and more http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/demog/ctry.htm Another link, just found by me: Global Population Project, with many more statistics and info: http://www.koeln.netsurf.de/~stefan.helders/content.htm Interested in names? "The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) database of foreign geographic feature names. Approximately 20,000 of the database's 3.5 million features are updated monthly with names information approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (US BGN)." The index to the country files: http://164.214.2.59/gns/html/Cntry_Files.html Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Latitude/longitude, sometimes a bit more info http://shiva.pub.getty.edu/tgn_browser/ US State Department: Independent States in the World; a list with capitals: http://www.state.gov/www/regions/independent_states.html I just read an article about Sealand (AD Magazine Sep 30 2000, from Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch), www.ad.nl) The Principality of Sealand, not by the UN recognised "country", not in tz: http://www.sealandgov.com/ Location: 051.53.40 N, 01.28.57 E. No information about timezone, probably UTC+0. Average number of inhabitants: 6. About 300 people seem to have a Sealand passport. Which Dutch city (that's 'city', not 'gemeente') is the largest? Amsterdam 718150 Rotterdam 590480 Den Haag 442800 Source (Dutch site): http://www.stedengids.net/cijfersnederland.htm UN statistics (see above) gives the same idea (year 1994): Amsterdam city: 723163, urban agglom.: 1100764 Rotterdam city: 598236, urban agglom.: 1076442 's-Gravenhage city: 444108, urban agglom.: 694733 Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-10-01

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IAU resolution supporting leap second reform
by Paul Eggert Sept. 30, 2000

Sept. 30, 2000

http://clockdev.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0009&L=leapsecs&F=lf&S=&… reports that the following resolution was adopted by the IAU last month: The International Astronomical Union Recognising 1. that the definition of Coordinated Universal time (UTC) relies on the astronomical observation of the UT1 time scale in order to introduce leap seconds, 2. that the unpredictability of leap seconds affects modern communication and navigation systems, 3. that astronomical observations provide an accurate estimate of the secular deceleration of the Earth's rate of rotation, Recommends 1. that the IAU establish a Working Group reporting to Division 1 at the General Assembly in 2003 to consider the redefinition of UTC, 2. that this study discuss whether there is a requirement for leap seconds, the possibility of inserting leap seconds at pre-determined intervals, and the tolerance limits for UT1-UTC, and 3. that this study be undertaken in cooperation with the appropriate groups of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-R), the International Bureau for Weights and Measures (BIPM), and relevant navigational agencies.

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Re: Alternative place names?
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl Sept. 29, 2000

Sept. 29, 2000

> I am NOT proposing to change the Theory rules, but I wonder: population > count, popularity, media exposure all change, a capital hardly or not. A > capital is or should be known to everybody. Haven't we all had some kind of > geography lessons, years or decades ago? Oh, come on. How many people in the Netherlands know the official name of its capital? How many people not of Dutch origin know what the real capital is? And it would seem strange to use that name in the files in conjunction with "Amsterdam time". I am quite happy with Europe/Amsterdam, but that is where I live of course ;-). dik

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Re: Another capital
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

>> Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! >> Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. >> The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). > Which makes it the capital by both the English meaning of the word (Webster) > and the Dutch meaning of the word (van Dale). Note that when I was at school > we were taught that The Hague was the capital, while the only claim to fame > of Amsterdam was that Kings and Queens would be crowned there. Forgot to mention something. You talk about "formal capital", but that can only be the case if it is written down somewhere in the legislation, but there is nothing about that anywhere. My (Dutch) encyclopedia (which postdates my schooldays by quite some years) says: "Generally Amsterdam is seen as the capital of the Netherlands although the seat of government is in The Hague." Note that this implies that it is not universal, nor that it would actually be correct. dik

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Re: Another capital
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

> Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! > Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. > The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). Which makes it the capital by both the English meaning of the word (Webster) and the Dutch meaning of the word (van Dale). Note that when I was at school we were taught that The Hague was the capital, while the only claim to fame of Amsterdam was that Kings and Queens would be crowned there. dik

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Another capital
by Oscar van Vlijmen Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

> Dik Winter: > Oh, come on. How many people in the Netherlands know the official name > of its capital? How many people not of Dutch origin know what the real > capital is? And it would seem strange to use that name in the files in > conjunction with "Amsterdam time". I am quite happy with Europe/Amsterdam, > but that is where I live of course ;-). Welkom en welkom gefeliciteerd in deez' wonderschone hoofdstad van ons land! Congratulations! You live in the real and formal capital of the Netherlands. The Dutch government has its seat in The Hague (Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage). Many globally accessible sources, e.g. the CIA World Factbook, will tell you the same. http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-28

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Re: Eastern Peace Time
by Paul Eggert Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

"Olson, Arthur David (NCI)" <olsona(a)dc37a.nci.nih.gov> writes: > Last night I heard part of a rebroadcast of a 1945 Arch Oboler radio > drama. In the introduction, Oboler spoke of "Eastern Peace Time." > An AltaVista search turned up http://rowayton.org/rhs/hstaug45.html > by way of confirmation. Peace is such a wonderful thing! We must put this into the database. > ...and presumably what's needed is a line between these two such as... > ...where h:mm is the time that the document ending the war was signed. The document was signed on September 2, but from that web page it appears that the radio was announcing "Eastern Peace Time" in August 1945. Truman officially declared V-J Day on August 15, 1945. Many people celebrate V-J day on September 2, when the documents were signed on the battleship Missouri, but that's not the right date for tz purposes. <http://www.merchant-marine.com/va--ammv.htm> says that at 0615 hours, the US Navy ordered that all offensive operations against Japan cease; this is the best time that I could find for the actual start of peace. > 1. What are the correct values for h and mm above? I would say August 15, 1945, at 06:15 -- presumably this was EWT, so the transition was at 10:15 Universal Time. # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S Rule US 1945 only - Aug 15 10:15u 1:00 P # Peace (V-J Day) I'll put this into my next proposed batch of changes.

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Re: (Cyprus), Nicosia is in Europe not Asia.
by Paul Eggert Sept. 28, 2000

Sept. 28, 2000

Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca(a)renault.fr> writes: > Paul Eggert wrote: > > > I don't know of any current official dividing line between Europe and > > Asia [...] Geographically, Cyprus is > > clearly in Asia, and this has long been recognized. > > Sorry Paul: you are not consistent. Either you do not know of a dividing > line (as I do not, hence I do not comment on the issue). Or you do know > that "Cyprus is clearly in Asia", which in fact means that you know > of some line. What I was trying to say (perhaps infelicitously) is that the geographic dividing line is fuzzy in places (e.g. are the Mugadzhar mountains in Europe or in Asia?) but Cyprus is pretty clearly on the Asian side. Here's a quote that states things fairly accurately, I think: Geographically, Cyprus is considered to be a part of West Asia (this Mediterranean island is much closer to the mainland of Asia than to that of Europe). However, due to cultural, demographic, and historical reasons, it is often considered as a part of Europe. http://www.ozemail.com.au/~natinfo/asia3-2.htm#cyprus However, after some more research I agree that the point is disputable. In particular, the Encyclopedia Britannica flatly says that Cyprus is part of Europe. See <http://www.britannica.com/seo/e/europe/>. > The problem with Cyprus is that, at least as he said, Yiango was > unable to find Cyprus TZ because it cannot found it under > Europe/Nicosia. Yes, that's perhaps the best practical argument for putting it under Europe. I guess you have talked me into adding something like this: # Classically, Cyprus belongs to Asia; e.g. see Herodotus, Histories, I.72. # However, for various reasons many users expect to find it under Europe. Link Asia/Nicosia Europe/Nicosia

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Sao Paulo DST change this year?
by David Madeo Sept. 27, 2000

Sept. 27, 2000

Hi, Sorry to distract from the alternative names, but I have a report from a Sao Paulo colleague that they've changed the date for the transition again this year. According to him, As you may know we have the daylight savings for Sao Paulo/Brazil coming soon and as it happens every year the government has changed the dates again... It'll start on oct/8th and will end on February 18 both at 0:00. This doesn't seem to match up with this excerpt from 2000f/southamerica # Decree <a href="http://pcdsh01.on.br/DecHV99.gif">3,188</a> (1999-09-30) # adds SE, AL, PE, PR, RN, CE, PI, MA and RR. # These give only one year's rules. After that, the rules are guesses # and are quite possibly wrong, but are more likely than no DST at all. Rule Brazil 1999 max - Oct Sun>=1 0:00 1:00 S Rule Brazil 2000 max - Feb lastSun 0:00 0 - I can't believe I'm the first to report this. Did I miss an update? Is my colleague misinformed? Thanks, dmadeo

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Re: Alternative place names
by Paul Eggert Sept. 27, 2000

Sept. 27, 2000

"Gwillim Law" <gwil(a)mindspring.com> writes: > I hope we'll resist making frequent changes to the zone names. > Please remember that every change has a cost. In this case, there's > the labor of updating databases, resource files, source code, etc. Yes. For the two proposed changes Asia/Ashkhabad -> Asia/Ashgabat and Asia/Thimbu -> Asia/Thimphu, we'd definitely add entries to the "backward" file, so that any existing users could continue to use the old names. > Do not change established names unless they become ambiguous or shockingly > incorrect. That is a pretty conservative rule. I think I'm a bit more liberal, at least for names that are rarely used. I'd be somewhat surprised if anyone is currently using either of the two names in question as a TZ string. (Thimphu has 20,000 people and no stoplights. :-) The "backward" file let us survive the Great Renaming of 1993 (e.g. "US/Eastern" -> "America/New_York") with little problem, so I'm not to worried about renaming Thimbu. Also, a problem with this rule is that it's hard to define "shockingly incorrect" without going into politics. For example, if we had established the tz database in 1940 and had needed an entry for Asia/Peiping, would that name be "shockingly incorrect" by now? The name "Peiping" implies that Beijing is not the capital of China, and that would probably shock most Chinese; but it wouldn't shock most English-speakers because they don't have a feel for the Chinese etymology. This is an extreme case, but I hope you see what I mean. How about the following more liberal rules instead? Do not change established names if they only marginally violate the above rules. For example, don't change the existing name `Rome' to `Milan' merely because Milan's population has grown to be somewhat greater than Rome's. If a name is changed, put its old spelling in the `backward' file.

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Alternative place names
by Oscar van Vlijmen Sept. 26, 2000

Sept. 26, 2000

To the discussion about possible alternative zone names in the tz-data files: I wrote: > If one doesn't like those names as zone names, just add them as a comment. And Paul Eggert replied: >> That has already been done in the latest tz sources. Sorry, I missed this one! It's good that this happened, because the alternative names are a valuable feature of the tz data, worth mentioning. About the Greenland names: >From the postal codes Greenland page (http://www.dpc.dk/Guide/PostalCodes.html) "3970 Pituffik (Dundas, Thule Air Base)" "3971 Qaanaaq (Thule)" See also: http://www.greenland-guide.dk/gt/maps/default.htm Paul Eggert wrote: > ... But this is another hint that perhaps we should > leave the tz Zone names alone, at least for now. In conclusion for the Greenland case I would like to suggest: Keep the current zone names because Thule and the other Danish names are globally more common, keep the commented Inuit names, but change Pituffik to Qaanaaq. However small Qaanaaq is, it refers to Thule; Pituffik refers to the air base. There are several other small inconsistencies in the zone names and comments of the tz data files. I took a look at the Asia file, with the latest Times atlas, the huge millennium edition, in front of me: * Bhutan: the name of the capital is Thimphu, not Thimbu. It is possible that Thimphu (not an f but an aspirated p) is a closer transliteration of the Dzongkha prononciation than the old British transliteration Thimbu. * Cambodia: Phnom Penh says the tz data, Phnum Penh is a more modern transliteration. * China: Chungking: seems to me an old and wrong French transliteration of Chongqing; the q is not a k-sound, but a ts-sound. * Cyprus: Nicosia. Isn't this called Lefkosia at the moment? * Kazakhstan: Aqtau: could be a pre-1940 transliteration; since the Cyrillic script was reused, the correct transliteration, according to the Times atlas, is Aktau. Where on earth is Aqtobe? TZ data says it's in the Aktyubinsk time zone. Since Aktyubinsk is on the map (both as an oblast' name and as the capital of that county), why not change Aqtobe to Aktyubinsk. * Kirgizstan: should be Kyrgyzstan. * Laos: Vientiane. Put in a comment the better transliteration of Lao name: Viangchan. * Qatar: Al Dawhah: it's Ad Dawhah or the more Latin alternative Doha. * Bahrain: no need for '-' in Al-Manamah, so: Al Manamah. * Syria: Damascus; comment: Dimashq. * Thailand: no, I won't suggest a comment for the (abbreviated) formal name Krung Thep; just Bangkok. If you really like the long one, here it comes: Krungthep Mahanakhon Amorn Rattanakosin Mahintara Yudthaya Mahadilok Pohp Noparat Rajathanee Bureerom Udomrajniwes Mahasatarn Amorn Pimarn Avaltarnsatit Sakatattiya Visanukram Prasit (ref.: http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Flats/1233/bkk.htm) * Turkmenistan has since 1991 the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic. I'm not sure if it's Ashkhabad or Ashgabat at the moment. I think the latter. * Vietnam: tzdata says: Saigon's official name is Thanh-Pho Ho Chi Minh. How nice, but isn't the capital Ha Noi? The fact that probably more Americans actually have been in Saigon should not play any role ;) So, there is still a bit of work to do if one would like to dot some i's. Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-26

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Re: Alternative place names
by Paul Eggert Sept. 26, 2000

Sept. 26, 2000

Vadim Vygonets <vadik(a)cs.huji.ac.il> writes: > I just asked a Chinese guy, who says that Chongqing is the > official transliteration used in China. So maybe we should go > with the Chinese government. That is an argument for switching, all other things being equal. But I'm not convinced that we should switch entirely to Pinyin. For example, should we change Asia/Harbin to Asia/Haerbin (or Asia/Haerbin_Shi -- it's not clear to me which is right)? The word "Harbin" isn't derived from Chinese, which makes matters even more interesting. In English, "Harbin" is by far the dominant form -- 50 times more common, according to Altavista -- so I'm not inclined to switch it. For Asia/Hong_Kong and Asia/Macao, it's even clearer to me that we shouldn't switch to Pinyin. We have this problem with Asia/Urumqi and Asia/Kashgar too; in both cases I chose the form that I found to be more popular in English at the time (in the first case Pinyin, in the second case conventional). Perhaps the worst example of this problem is Mongolia. Places like Hovd and Choybalsan seem to have dozens of spellings each. With cases like this we have to just close our eyes and pick a name, to some extent. > 'i' and 'y' are different sounds, at least in Russian. Kirgizia > and Kirgizstan are Russian names, Kyrgyzstan is Kyrgyzian > (Kirgizian?). Hmm, also Altavista says that "Kyrgyzstan" is much more popular. So let's prefer "Kyrgyzstan" in the comment and in iso3166.tab. The CIA prefers "Kyrgyzstan" as well, and they seem to be relatively up-to-date in these matters. (_The Economist_ prefers "Kirgizstan", which is where I got the spelling originally.) > > Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon is far more populous than Hanoi, so that's > > why we use it. (Just as we use Los Angeles and not Sacramento. :-) > > However, Asia/Jerusalem and not Asia/Tel_Aviv is the official > time zone for Israel. It used to be Asia/Tel_Aviv, but someone reported that Jerusalem's population is now greater than Tel Aviv's, at least by some measures. Jerusalem is much better-known, so that was enough to get us to switch. If Jerusalem becomes a divided city with different daylight-saving rules, then we'll need to revisit this issue.

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Porche Boxter or Luxury Cruise Earn $$$ In Days This Works!!!
by donald453＠bbc.co.uk Sept. 26, 2000

Sept. 26, 2000

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REPORT #1 "The Insider�s Guide to Advertising for Free on the Internet" ORDER REPORT #1 FROM: Andrew Skidmore 9379 Alexander Rd Alexander, NY 14005 USA REPORT #2 "The Insider�s Guide to Sending Bulk E-mail on the Internet" ORDER REPORT #2 FROM: Lars Pedersen Skejbygaardsvej 7, 1, 10 8240 Risskov Denmark REPORT #3 "The Secrets to Multilevel Marketing on the Internet" ORDER REPORT #3 FROM: John Cole Werner PO Box 3281 Lihue, HI 96766 REPORT #4 "How to become a Millionaire utilizing the Power of Multilevel Marketing and the Internet" ORDER REPORT #4 FROM: Zac Majors 2242 E Woodchuck Way Sandy, UT 84093 ******* TIPS FOR SUCCESS ******* TREAT THIS AS YOUR BUSINESS! Be prompt, professional, and follow the directions accurately. Send for the four reports IMMEDIATELY so you will have them when the orders start coming in because: When you receive a $5 order, you MUST send out the requested product/report. 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Your earnings are highly dependent on your activities and advertising. The information contained on this site and in the report constitutes no guarantees stated nor implied. In the event that it is determined that this site or report constitutes a guarantee of any kind, that guarantee is now void. The earnings amounts listed on this site and in the report are estimates only. If you have any questions of the legality of this program, contact the Office of Associate Director for Marketing Practices, Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Consumer Protection in Washington, DC. ================================================ Under Bill s.1618 TITLE III passed by the 105th US Congress this letter cannot be considered spam as long as the sender includes contact information and a method of removal. This is a one time e-mail transmission. No request for removal is necessary.

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Re: Alternative place names
by Paul Eggert Sept. 26, 2000

Sept. 26, 2000

Oscar van Vlijmen <o.van.vlijmen(a)tip.nl> writes: > Keep the current zone names because Thule and the other Danish names are > globally more common, keep the commented Inuit names, but change Pituffik to > Qaanaaq. However small Qaanaaq is, it refers to Thule; Pituffik refers to > the air base. The "Thule" entry refers to the airbase, not the town. Until recently, Thule was the only time zone region whose most populous location was an airbase. Even now the populations of the town and the airbase are neck and neck, so I'd leave it alone for now. However, I'll append "air base" to the comment, to make it clearer. > * Bhutan: the name of the capital is Thimphu, not Thimbu. Good point. By Altavista's count, "Thimphu" is now far more popular than "Thimbu" in English. I'll change this in my next proposed patch. > * Cambodia: Phnom Penh says the tz data, Phnum Penh is a more modern > transliteration. Altavista says that "Phnom Penh" is still more popular in English, by a wide, wide margin. So let's stick with it. (Besides, we can't put the accent over the "e" in a Posix name. :-) > * China: Chungking: seems to me an old and wrong French transliteration of > Chongqing; the q is not a k-sound, but a ts-sound. Chungking is the traditional English name; e.g. see <http://www.sinistra.net/els/sup/transcript.html>, which gives the following examples, among others: (Postal) (Pinyin) Canton Guangzhou Chungking Chongqing Hong Kong Xianggang Macao Aomen Peking Beijing Szechuan Sichuan Of these examples, I think "Beijing" is clearly more popular than "Peking" in English these days. At the other extreme is "Xianggang", which few English-speakers have ever heard of. "Chungking" is somewhere in the middle -- still more popular than the Pinyin name in movie titles (e.g. Chungking Express [1994], a movie made in Hong Kong) but less popular in, say, English-language travel web sites produced in the PRC. For now I'm slightly inclined to leave it as "Chungking" for a little while longer, but put "Chongqing" in as a comment. Similarly for the other Postal names. > * Cyprus: Nicosia. Isn't this called Lefkosia at the moment? That's news to me. I often see English-language news dispatches with a Nicosia dateline. Perhaps it depends on whether you're looking at the city from a European or an Asian viewpoint? I can just see it now: Europe/Nicosia as an alias for Asia/Lefkosia. (No, no, forget that I mentioned it. :-) > * Kazakhstan: Aqtau: could be a pre-1940 transliteration; since the Cyrillic > script was reused, the correct transliteration, according to the Times > atlas, is Aktau. The CIA spells it "Aqtau". The Times of Central Asia (the only online English-language newspaper in the area that I could find) also spells it "Aqtau"; see <http://www.times.kg/web-guide/kazakhstan/>. The Lonely Planet guide also calls it "Aqtau" (and I can't resist repeating its remark that the town is "for the perverse and JG Ballard lovers only"). But a lot of Russian-derived sources do indeed spell it "Aktau", and I think the oil companies tend to follow the Russians. Currently "Aktau" is present as a comment; I'm inclined to leave it that way for now. > Where on earth is Aqtobe? TZ data says it's in the > Aktyubinsk time zone. Since Aktyubinsk is on the map (both as an oblast' > name and as the capital of that county), why not change Aqtobe to > Aktyubinsk. Aktyubinsk is the old (Russian) name, and Aqtobe is the new (Kazakh) one. Google says "Aqtobe" is more popular these days (not surprising, as "Aktyubinsk" is a pain to spell :-). > * Kirgizstan: should be Kyrgyzstan. The official name indeed has "y" but I think "i" is quite popular in English. It's just a comment, so it doesn't matter all that much. I'll include both spellings in the comment. > * Laos: Vientiane. Put in a comment the better transliteration of Lao name: > Viangchan. > * Qatar: Al Dawhah: it's Ad Dawhah or the more Latin alternative Doha. > * Bahrain: no need for '-' in Al-Manamah, so: Al Manamah. > * Syria: Damascus; comment: Dimashq. Thanks; I'll add/fix these comments. > * Turkmenistan has since 1991 the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic. > I'm not sure if it's Ashkhabad or Ashgabat at the moment. Altavista says that Ashgabat is much more common, and the CIA uses Ashgabat. This looks like we should change the name too. > * Vietnam: tzdata says: Saigon's official name is Thanh-Pho Ho Chi Minh. How > nice, but isn't the capital Ha Noi? The fact that probably more Americans > actually have been in Saigon should not play any role ;) Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon is far more populous than Hanoi, so that's why we use it. (Just as we use Los Angeles and not Sacramento. :-)

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