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daylight-saving news from Australia, Missouri, Japan
by Paul Eggert Aug. 17, 2007

Aug. 17, 2007

Some daylight-saving news from all over: Some National Party members in Western Australia are planning a campaign of civil disobedience against daylight saving time. Premier Alan Carpenter has ridiculed the idea. <http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Protesters-may-ignore-WA-daylight-savin…> The residents of one Amish community near Columbia, Missouri do not observe daylight saving time. <http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/08/16/heat-fact-life-amish/> Nippon Keidanren and major banks in Japan have begun an informal daylight saving time by scheduling the work day one hour earlier than usual for one month. <http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070801p2a00m0na004000c.html>

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daylight saving in Egypt
by Dirk Losch Aug. 14, 2007

Aug. 14, 2007

Hello, I received a mail from an airline which says that the daylight saving time in Egypt will end in the night of 2007-09-06 to 2007-09-07. Can anyone confirm this? In the database are the following entries: .... Rule Egypt 1995 max - Apr lastFri 0:00s 1:00 S Rule Egypt 1995 2005 - Sep lastThu 23:00s 0 - # From Steffen Thorsen (2006-09-19): # The Egyptian Gazette, issue 41,090 (2006-09-18), page 1, reports: # Egypt will turn back clocks by one hour at the midnight of Thursday # after observing the daylight saving time since May. # http://news.gom.com.eg/gazette/pdf/2006/09/18/01.pdf Rule Egypt 2006 only - Sep 21 23:00s 0 - Rule Egypt 2007 max - Sep lastThu 23:00s 0 - ... Best regards - dirk -

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FW: More daylight savings in Australia
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] Aug. 2, 2007

Aug. 2, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Susan Johnson, who is on the time zone mailing list at a different address than the one shown below. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Johnson, Susan [mailto:Susan.Johnson@kronos.com] Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 8:39 To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: RE: More daylight savings in Australia Folks, Do we have any official word on what will happen in Western/Southern Australia and when? My Australian office tells me that it now looks like South Australia, NSW, ACT, Victoria, and Tasmania DST changes will occur the first Sunday in April 2008 - instead of the first Sunday in October 2007. All changes are permanent except for South Australia, which will undergo a 'trial' change. --Sue Susan Johnson Manager, Customer Engineering Product Management Kronos Incorporated p: (978) 947-4342 f: (978) 367-5818 www.kronos.com Experts at Improving the Performance of People and Business(tm) -----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU] Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 4:12 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: More daylight savings in Australia "Eric Ulevik" <eulevik(a)gmail.com> writes: > http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21549128-2,00.html Thanks for the heads-up. Today's Sydney Morning Herald reports that South Australia and the Northern Territory (!) may sign up later, but that Western Australia and Queensland will not be involved. Perhaps we should wait a bit to see who falls into line. Also, the SMH says only "it is believed" the dates are as you mentioned. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/04/12/1175971265494.html This is currently listed as the #4 most-viewed article on the Sydney Morning Herald web site. A slow news day? -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 269.3.0/758 - Release Date: 4/12/2007 11:52 AM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.10.12/910 - Release Date: 7/21/2007 3:52 PM

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FW: How to support such capabilites based on current Olson Time Zone implementation
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 30, 2007

July 30, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Martin Doug, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado From: Martin Dong [mailto:cppcraze@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 5:22 To: markus.icu(a)gmail.com; yoshito_umaoka(a)us.ibm.com Cc: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: FW: How to support such capabilites based on current Olson Time Zone implementation Dear Markus and Yoshito, Thanks for leading me to ICU project, which is really a full-featured library for internationalization. I feel it's more appropriate to consider using it from the very initial system design. However our system has already had its own internationalization mechanism, now we only want to utilize Olson Time Zone database. We need a light-weight solution but I think ICU is too heavy for us. Actually tzcode is a light-weight implementation, if I can make some change based on it to support what I want, I think it's enough. Dear Olson, I want to know more about tzfile in binary form. Is there any other detailed description? I feel it's a little bit hard to get it understood just through the tzcode (because the comments are vrey few:-). Btw, for now can any new functionality be added into tzcode implementation? Or another question, if my change can meet my requirements and it goes into our system, does it need to go into Olson tzcode? Sincerely, -Martin On 7/28/07, yoshito_umaoka(a)us.ibm.com <yoshito_umaoka(a)us.ibm.com > wrote: For the second requirement "getting the next nearest DST transition time", next version of ICU (ICU 3.8) will provide the API. -Yoshito "Markus Scherer" <markus.icu(a)gmail.com> wrote on 07/27/2007 02:38:00 PM: > Dear Martin, > > For at least the first requirement, you might want to try other time > zone support libraries listed on this list's homepage [1], for example > ICU [2]. You could also send an email to the icu-support mailing list > [3] to see if your second can be provided for. > > [1] http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm > [2] http://icu-project.org/ > [3] http://icu-project.org/contacts.html > > Best regards, > markus

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FW: How to support such capabilites based on current Olson Time Zone implementation
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 30, 2007

July 30, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Martin Dong, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado From: Martin Dong [mailto:cppcraze@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 12:56 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: How to support such capabilites based on current Olson Time Zone implementation Dear All in this maillist, We have been investigating the feasibility of migrating Olson Time Zone Database to our system. Given that our system is Linux-based, we can just use tzcode implementation or Glibc functions because Glibc has adopted Olson implementation to some extent. But according to our basic and existing requirements, I have met some problems that I think are hard for me: * How to get the local time of different region or city at the same time? The basic requirement is to display the local time of different region or city at the same time. After some study of Olson implementation, I knew function "localtime" will handle everything, parsing tzfile and doing the conversion from utc to local time. The correct local time can be gotten through a simple invocation to "localtime". But "localtime" assumes the Sytem Local Time Zone is set in environmental variable "TZ" or from the Standard TimeZone file "/etc/localtime" if "TZ" is not defined in the process. In this case, how can a caller get the local time of some city which is not the System Local Time Zone? It seems we must change "TZ" or the Standard TimeZone file before calling "localtime" to get another city's local time because "localtime" doesn't take such an argument that can let caller specify a time zone, which means "localtime" can return the local time related to either the System Local Time Zone or the time zone user specifies. Although I know there're so many applications which already integrates the Olson Database and they have realized my above requirement "display multiple local time at the same time", I don't know how they make it. * How to get the notification of DST status change as time elaspes? This problem is out of our another requirement that we need to inform other components in our system of the DST status change in various conditions, such as changing time may lead to DST change, changing local time zone may lead to DST change, and as time elapsing, etc. The former two behaviors are user-active ones, we can track the change easily, but the problem is the last one, it's the system automatic behavior, our of the control of user. In this case, the system needs some CALLBACK ability to capture this change and further broadcast it. For our system, there's an Alarm Server that can provide timer machinasm. We will parse our own time zone database and get the next nearest DST transition time and add it to Alarm Server, then when the timer is time out, Alarm Server will trigger a CALLBACK function to further process. But it seems Olson is lack of such capability. After thinking from another perpsective, if we can get the next nearest DST transition time through Olson Time Zone database, we can still utilize our current Alarm Server. But it's still a problem how to get the next nearest DST transition time through the current Olson implementation because all the implementation is hiden behind "localtime". In all the public functions, there's no such one which can support getting the DST transition time. I don't have any good idea in mind right now. Should I make some modification to Olson to add such capability, or other way i could go? I will very much appreciate if any of you can give me some hints about above problems. Thank you in advance. Best Regards, -Martin

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FW: Does zic currently compile time zone abbreviations correctly?
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 27, 2007

July 27, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from John Morrow, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: John B. Morrow [mailto:jmorrow@sendwordnow.com] Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 12:19 PM To: Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]; tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: RE: Does zic currently compile time zone abbreviations correctly? This response and program was very helpful. Apparently I was missing the level of indirection that converted the type in the ttinfo into an abbrind to look up the abbreviation. For some time zones, that was fine and for others it wasn't. Now that I've added that additional level in, my program seems to be working correctly. Thank you for your quick response. John Morrow -----Original Message----- From: Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] [mailto:olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov] Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 11:29 AM To: tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov Cc: John B. Morrow Subject: RE: Does zic currently compile time zone abbreviations correctly? The typescript below seems to indicate that there's nothing amiss with Europe/London; do you get different results if you run "tzhead"? --ado Script started on Fri 27 Jul 2007 11:24:37 AM EDT lecserver$ cat tzhead.c #include "private.h" struct tzhead { char tzh_magic[4]; /* TZ_MAGIC */ char tzh_version[1]; /* '\0' or '2' as of 2005 */ char tzh_reserved[15]; /* reserved--must be zero */ char tzh_ttisgmtcnt[4]; /* coded number of trans. time flags */ char tzh_ttisstdcnt[4]; /* coded number of trans. time flags */ char tzh_leapcnt[4]; /* coded number of leap seconds */ char tzh_timecnt[4]; /* coded number of transition times */ char tzh_typecnt[4]; /* coded number of local time types */ char tzh_charcnt[4]; /* coded number of abbr. chars */ }; static char * progname; static long long detzcode64(codep) const char * const codep; { register long long result; register int i; result = (codep[0] & 0x80) ? ~0L : 0L; for (i = 0; i < 8; ++i) result = result * 256 + (codep[i] & 0xff); return result; } static long long detzcode(codep) const char * const codep; { register long result; register int i; result = (codep[0] & 0x80) ? ~0L : 0L; for (i = 0; i < 4; ++i) result = (result << 8) | (codep[i] & 0xff); return result; } static void wild2exit(cp, dp) { (void) fprintf(stderr, "%s: wild result %s %s\n", progname, cp, dp); exit(1); } static void handle(filename) char * filename; { FILE * fp; struct tzhead tzh; long long ll; char c; int i; int pass; long ttisgmtcnt; long ttisstdcnt; long leapcnt; long timecnt; long typecnt; long charcnt; char buf[8]; struct tm tm; fp = fopen(filename, "r"); if (fp == NULL) wild2exit("result opening", filename); for (pass = 1; pass <= 2; ++pass) { if (fread(&tzh, sizeof tzh, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); (void) printf("%s\tversion\t", filename); c = tzh.tzh_version[0]; if (isascii(c) && isprint(c)) (void) putchar(c); else (void) printf("\\%o", c); (void) putchar('\n'); ttisgmtcnt = detzcode(tzh.tzh_ttisgmtcnt); ttisstdcnt = detzcode(tzh.tzh_ttisstdcnt); leapcnt = detzcode(tzh.tzh_leapcnt); timecnt = detzcode(tzh.tzh_timecnt); typecnt = detzcode(tzh.tzh_typecnt); charcnt = detzcode(tzh.tzh_charcnt); (void) printf("%s\tttisgmtcnt\t%ld\n", filename, ttisgmtcnt); (void) printf("%s\tttisstdcnt\t%ld\n", filename, ttisstdcnt); (void) printf("%s\tleapcnt\t%ld\n", filename, leapcnt); (void) printf("%s\ttimecnt\t%ld\n", filename, timecnt); (void) printf("%s\ttypecnt\t%ld\n", filename, typecnt); (void) printf("%s\tcharcnt\t%ld\n", filename, charcnt); for (i = 0; i < timecnt; ++i) { if (fread(buf, pass * 4, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); ll = (pass == 1) ? detzcode(buf) : detzcode64(buf); { time_t l; l = ll; tm = *gmtime(&l); } (void) printf("%s\ttime[%d]\t%lld\t%s", filename, i, ll, asctime(&tm)); } for (i = 0; i < timecnt; ++i) { if (fread(buf, 1, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); (void) printf("%s\ttype[%d]\t%d\n", filename, i, buf[0]); } for (i = 0; i < typecnt; ++i) { long l; if (fread(buf, 4, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); l = detzcode(buf); (void) printf("%s\ttype[%d].offset\t%ld\n", filename, i, l); if (fread(buf, 1, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); (void) printf("%s\ttype[%d].isdst\t%ld\n", filename, i, buf[0]); if (fread(buf, 1, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); (void) printf("%s\ttype[%d].abbrind\t%ld\n", filename, i, buf[0]); } for (i = 0; i < charcnt; ++i) { if (fread(buf, 1, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); (void) printf("%s\tabbr[%d]\t", filename, i); if (isascii(buf[0]) && isprint(buf[0])) (void) printf("%c", buf[0]); else if (buf[0] == '\0') (void) printf("\\0"); else (void) printf("\%03o", buf[0]); (void) printf("\n"); } for (i = 0; i < ttisstdcnt; ++i) { if (fread(buf, 1, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); (void) printf("%s\tisstd[%d]\t%d\n", filename, i, buf[0]); } for (i = 0; i < ttisgmtcnt; ++i) { if (fread(buf, 1, 1, fp) != 1) wild2exit("result reading", filename); (void) printf("%s\tisgmt[%d]\t%d\n", filename, i, buf[0]); } if (tzh.tzh_version[0] != '2') break; } if (fclose(fp) != 0) { (void) fprintf(stderr, "%s: wild result closing %s\n", progname, filename); exit(1); } } int main(argc, argv) int argc; char * argv[]; { int i; progname = argv[0]; for (i = 1; i < argc; ++i) handle(argv[i]); exit(0); } lecserver$ make tzhead cc -DTZDIR=\"/usr/local/etc/zoneinfo\" tzhead.c -o tzhead lecserver$ tzhead tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London | grep abbr tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[0].abbrind 0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[1].abbrind 4 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[2].abbrind 8 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[3].abbrind 0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[4].abbrind 0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[5].abbrind 4 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[6].abbrind 4 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[0] B tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[1] S tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[2] T tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[3] \0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[4] G tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[5] M tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[6] T tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[7] \0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[8] B tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[9] D tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[10] S tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[11] T tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[12] \0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[0].abbrind 0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[1].abbrind 4 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[2].abbrind 8 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[3].abbrind 12 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[4].abbrind 4 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[5].abbrind 4 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[6].abbrind 8 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London type[7].abbrind 8 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[0] L tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[1] M tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[2] T tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[3] \0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[4] B tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[5] S tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[6] T tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[7] \0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[8] G tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[9] M tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[10] T tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[11] \0 tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[12] B tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[13] D tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[14] S tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[15] T tmp/etc/zoneinfo/Europe/London abbr[16] \0 lecserver$ exit script done on Fri 27 Jul 2007 11:25:04 AM EDT From: John B. Morrow [mailto:jmorrow@sendwordnow.com] Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 2:29 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Does zic currently compile time zone abbreviations correctly? In the process of extracting time zone information from the zoneinfo database, I noticed that the abbreviation pointer break for quite a few time zones including Europe/London, Asia/Dubai, and quite a few others. The problem seems to be in the compiled time zone files so I spent some time looking at zic. What seems to be happening is that zic uses some criteria to determine of the abbreviation (and other info for types) is used and won't write it if it thinks it isn't needed. The problem is that it doesn't adjust the indexes (tt_abbrind) that reference those abbreviations, so they'll point to bad data or empty strings. My quick (and admittedly heavy handed fix) was to force zic to write all of the abbreviations, whether they are necessary or not. If this really is a problem, it should probably be fixed at some point. Please note that the data in our fairly recently updated Linux server has abbreviations that don't seem to work. If I'm missing something or there is some other way more correct way to reference the abbreviations, please let me know. I'm using tt_abbrind as per the tzfile man page and the tzcode2007f.tar.gz sources. John Morrow

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FW: Does zic currently compile time zone abbreviations correctly?
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 27, 2007

July 27, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from John B. Morrow, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado From: John B. Morrow [mailto:jmorrow@sendwordnow.com] Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 2:29 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Does zic currently compile time zone abbreviations correctly? In the process of extracting time zone information from the zoneinfo database, I noticed that the abbreviation pointer break for quite a few time zones including Europe/London, Asia/Dubai, and quite a few others. The problem seems to be in the compiled time zone files so I spent some time looking at zic. What seems to be happening is that zic uses some criteria to determine of the abbreviation (and other info for types) is used and won't write it if it thinks it isn't needed. The problem is that it doesn't adjust the indexes (tt_abbrind) that reference those abbreviations, so they'll point to bad data or empty strings. My quick (and admittedly heavy handed fix) was to force zic to write all of the abbreviations, whether they are necessary or not. If this really is a problem, it should probably be fixed at some point. Please note that the data in our fairly recently updated Linux server has abbreviations that don't seem to work. If I'm missing something or there is some other way more correct way to reference the abbreviations, please let me know. I'm using tt_abbrind as per the tzfile man page and the tzcode2007f.tar.gz sources. John Morrow

2 2

Does zic currently compile time zone abbreviations correctly?
by John B. Morrow July 27, 2007

July 27, 2007

In the process of extracting time zone information from the zoneinfo database, I noticed that the abbreviation pointer break for quite a few time zones including Europe/London, Asia/Dubai, and quite a few others. The problem seems to be in the compiled time zone files so I spent some time looking at zic. What seems to be happening is that zic uses some criteria to determine of the abbreviation (and other info for types) is used and won't write it if it thinks it isn't needed. The problem is that it doesn't adjust the indexes (tt_abbrind) that reference those abbreviations, so they'll point to bad data or empty strings. My quick (and admittedly heavy handed fix) was to force zic to write all of the abbreviations, whether they are necessary or not. If this really is a problem, it should probably be fixed at some point. Please note that the data in our fairly recently updated Linux server has abbreviations that don't seem to work. If I'm missing something or there is some other way more correct way to reference the abbreviations, please let me know. I'm using tt_abbrind as per the tzfile man page and the tzcode2007f.tar.gz sources. John Morrow

1 0

How to support such capabilites based on current Olson Time Zone implementation
by Martin Dong July 27, 2007

July 27, 2007

Dear All in this maillist, We have been investigating the feasibility of migrating Olson Time Zone Database to our system. Given that our system is Linux-based, we can just use tzcode implementation or Glibc functions because Glibc has adopted Olson implementation to some extent. But according to our basic and existing requirements, I have met some problems that I think are hard for me: - How to get the local time of different region or city at the same time? The basic requirement is to display the local time of different region or city at the same time. After some study of Olson implementation, I knew function "localtime" will handle everything, parsing tzfile and doing the conversion from utc to local time. The correct local time can be gotten through a simple invocation to "localtime". But "localtime" assumes the Sytem Local Time Zone is set in environmental variable "TZ" or from the Standard TimeZone file "/etc/localtime" if "TZ" is not defined in the process. In this case, how can a caller get the local time of some city which is not the System Local Time Zone? It seems we must change "TZ" or the Standard TimeZone file before calling "localtime" to get another city's local time because "localtime" doesn't take such an argument that can let caller specify a time zone, which means "localtime" can return the local time related to either the System Local Time Zone or the time zone user specifies. Although I know there're so many applications which already integrates the Olson Database and they have realized my above requirement "display multiple local time at the same time", I don't know how they make it. - How to get the notification of DST status change as time elaspes? This problem is out of our another requirement that we need to inform other components in our system of the DST status change in various conditions, such as changing time may lead to DST change, changing local time zone may lead to DST change, and as time elapsing, etc. The former two behaviors are user-active ones, we can track the change easily, but the problem is the last one, it's the system automatic behavior, our of the control of user. In this case, the system needs some CALLBACK ability to capture this change and further broadcast it. For our system, there's an Alarm Server that can provide timer machinasm. We will parse our own time zone database and get the next nearest DST transition time and add it to Alarm Server, then when the timer is time out, Alarm Server will trigger a CALLBACK function to further process. But it seems Olson is lack of such capability. After thinking from another perpsective, if we can get the next nearest DST transition time through Olson Time Zone database, we can still utilize our current Alarm Server. But it's still a problem how to get the next nearest DST transition time through the current Olson implementation because all the implementation is hiden behind "localtime". In all the public functions, there's no such one which can support getting the DST transition time. I don't have any good idea in mind right now. Should I make some modification to Olson to add such capability, or other way i could go? I will very much appreciate if any of you can give me some hints about above problems. Thank you in advance. Best Regards, -Martin

1 0

FW: Timezone of America/Tegucigalpa is wrong
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 23, 2007

July 23, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Freek de Kruijf, who was not on the time zone mailing list at the time it was sent. Freek has since been added. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Freek de Kruijf [mailto:f.de.kruijf@hetnet.nl] Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 3:38 To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Timezone of America/Tegucigalpa is wrong L.S. The timezone of America/Tegucigalpa includes a Daylight Saving Time. This is wrong. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduras . It is only UTC-6. I can confirm this, while I am there. -- fr.gr. Freek de Kruijf

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Olson tz database tests
by Kevin July 23, 2007

July 23, 2007

Hi, is there an existing suite of tests (e.g. unit tests, regression tests, etc.) for the Olson time zone database (to ensure validity, completeness, etc.)? I'm more interested in the logic than the language, although I would prefer C/C++, C#, or Java. Thanks, Kevin

2 1

More daylight savings in Australia
by Eric Ulevik July 23, 2007

July 23, 2007

The states of NSW, Victoria, ACT, Tasmania plan to harmonize DST, starting October 2007. "Under the plan, clocks will go forward one hour on the first Sunday in October, instead of on the last Sunday, and will be wound back by an hour on the first Sunday in April, rather than on the last Sunday in March." http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21549128-2,00.html Regards, Eric Ulevik

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Timezone of America/Tegucigalpa is wrong
by Freek de Kruijf July 22, 2007

July 22, 2007

L.S. The timezone of America/Tegucigalpa includes a Daylight Saving Time. This is wrong. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduras . It is only UTC-6. I can confirm this, while I am there. -- fr.gr. Freek de Kruijf

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Re: Geographical boundaries for the continental US tz zones
by rlaw＠nc.rr.com July 18, 2007

July 18, 2007

----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Eggert <eggert(a)CS.UCLA.EDU> > I send my comments to your US timezone map directly to the TZ list > since I > think it could be of common interest in the list and also to urge > members to > send comments where appropriate. I've put all of my findings about the limits of U.S. time zones (past and present) online at http://www.statoids.com/tus.html. It's all verbal description. For example: > * Idaho county split (Idaho state) > I have a northern and southern part of Idaho county, which I got from > another timezone map (possibly Manifold map). This indicates that the > southern part of Idaho county is on America/Boise time while the > northernpart is on America/Los_Angeles. I have "Idaho county north of the Salmon River" on Pacific Time. > * Sioux county North Dakota > Tz database states "part of Sioux county" and that is exactly what > you have > included, splitting it around Latitude 46 Longitude -101.34. Where > did you > get shis from? I have included all Sioux county being on same time, > but that > most be wrong. I have "Sioux county west of ND route 31" on Mountain Time. Gwillim Law

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Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin and Pike counties jump thru 1 more hoop
by Paul Eggert July 18, 2007

July 18, 2007

The DOT yesterday announced a proposed rule that would move the 132,000 residents of Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin and Pike counties in Indiana back to Eastern time, effective November 4 (when DST ends this year). The proposed rule has a 30-day public comment period, and then must be approved by the DOT to become final. See the AP article on this subject at <http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070718/LOCAL/707180456…>.

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FW: Implementation of zoneinfo (Olson, tz) database in .NET c-sharp csharp
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 18, 2007

July 18, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Joshua Kifer, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado From: Joshua Kifer [mailto:joshua@jotts.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 8:33 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Implementation of zoneinfo (Olson, tz) database in .NET c-sharp csharp I finally found an implementation of this at CodePlex. It's part of the PublicDomain project. http://www.codeplex.com/publicdomain I hope this post adds some search fodder to the interweb for all those unlucky bastards seeking (and not finding) the same.

10 17

Geographical boundaries for the continental US tz zones
by Paul Eggert July 18, 2007

July 18, 2007

Jesper Norgaard Welen tried to send the following email to the list on July 1, but apparently didn't get through. I am enclosing it in the hopes that it does get through this time. From: Jesper Norgaard Welen [mailto:jnorgard@prodigy.net.mx] Sent: Domingo, 01 de Julio de 2007 16:15 To: 'tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov' Cc: 'emuller(a)adobe.com' Subject: RE: Geographical boundaries for the continental US tz zones Hello, Eric Muller I send my comments to your US timezone map directly to the TZ list since I think it could be of common interest in the list and also to urge members to send comments where appropriate. My newest map for World Time Explorer you can download from http://worldtimeexplorer.com/tztables.zip * Navajo/Hopi reservations There is an important Hopi population that you have not included around Latitude 36.14 Longitude -109.40 that I would recommend you to include (see WTE map) * Nevada on Idaho time The city Jackpot in Nevada (and several others like Owyhee and Mountain city) are on Idaho south time, or Denver time if you will. I have included it in a 25 km broad strip of northern Elko county, however just based on common sense when there were cities 12 km below the border that were on Denver time, and I would not expect their time to stop 100 meters outside the city boundary, but note that it is arbitrary, and quite possibly not quite 25 km. Jackpot itself is quite close to the border to Idaho. * Idaho county split (Idaho state) I have a northern and southern part of Idaho county, which I got from another timezone map (possibly Manifold map). This indicates that the southern part of Idaho county is on America/Boise time while the northern part is on America/Los_Angeles. Note that this is *not* documented in the tz database - I am still a bit ambivalent which one to believe. If you want pure tz database functionality, the timezone border should be a little further south. * Alaska I have the same doubts as you. However, I have implemented a solution, however arbitrary it is, seems much better than just putting Juneau for all of Alaska. The Nome area is small, while most of northwestern Alaska is set to Anchorage time. Then there is a Yakutat area and a Juneau area. They are all based on counties in this area. Comments are welcome. * America/Kentucky/Louisville This city belongs to Jefferson county of Kentucky, so I just assumed that this would comprise the Louisville timezone - however tz database needs to describe this - and include more counties if there are more. It just states the vague "part of Kentucky". * Sioux county North Dakota Tz database states "part of Sioux county" and that is exactly what you have included, splitting it around Latitude 46 Longitude -101.34. Where did you get shis from? I have included all Sioux county being on same time, but that most be wrong. * Cherry county Nebraska I see you have a different, more detailed split of Cherry county than mine. Where did you get this from? * Morgan county, Tennessee I recently discovered that this county is on CST/CDT, and included this in the western part of Tennesse. It's around Latitude 36.07 Longitude -84.56 * Alabama Note that (parts of) Chambers, Lee and Russell counties should be on America/New_York time, not on America/Chicago time. * Culberson county, Texas Note that the parts of this county including Nickel creek and Pine Springs are on America/Denver time. Regards, - Jesper Nørgaard Welen -----Original Message----- From: Eric Muller [mailto:emuller@adobe.com] Sent: Domingo, 01 de Julio de 2007 12:07 To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Geographical boundaries for the continental US tz zones I have completed a first version of a map of the TZ timezones in the US. It is available as a shapefile at <http://www.efele.net/maps>. Comments welcome, Eric.

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Geographical boundaries for the continental US tz zones
by Eric Muller July 18, 2007

July 18, 2007

I am trying to figure out the geographical extent of the 19 continental US timezones defined by tz. Because my goal is ultimately to create a freely available digital map, I would like to get definitions in terms existing, freely available digital maps, and the ones at nationalatlas.gov seem appropriate. Specifically, I plan to use countyp020 (county boundaries 2001), statesp020 (states) and timeznp020 (time zones) [see below for more details on those maps]. I tried to translate the comments in the "northamerica" file in terms of operations on the elements of those three maps, but I have a few questions/comments. 1. I would think that America/Boise, America/Denver and America/Phoenix together correspond exactly to the Mountain time zone of timeznp020. However, the later includes the southern quarter of Idaho County, Idaho, while northamerica suggests that this county is entirely in America/Pacific. Who is right? 2. The description of America/Denver includes "far eastern Oregon", and the description of America/Boise includes "eastern Oregon". Comparing with timeznp020, I suspect that America/Denver should not include "far eastern Oregon". (and if timeznp020 is right, "eastern Oregon" could be better described as "most of Malheur County, Oregon"). 3. What does America/Indiana/Indianapolis cover? Is it all the counties of Indiana not listed in any of the other zones? 4. The overall description of Indiana includes: # - Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin, Perry, and Pulaski counties # have been like America/Indiana/Vincennes. # # - Crawford, Pike, Starke, and Switzerland counties have their own time zone # histories as noted below. However, it seems that Pulaski now has it own zone (America/Indiana/Winamac), so it should probably be moved from the first to the second bullet in the quote above. 5. The description of America/Indiana/Marengo is that it covers the eastern part of Crawford County. How is that county divided, and in which zone does the western part fall? 6. What part of Kentucky goes in America/Kentucky/Louisville? At this point, I am not trying to handle border towns such as West Wendover, mostly because I have no idea of where to find a boundary for such towns. Any suggestion on what to do for those cases is welcome. For those of you who are curious about the content of the maps cited above: you can download them from <http://nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html> and visualize them using standard GIS tools (I use the freely available OpenJUMP and uDig). Alternatively, I have created a KML version of timeznp020 (using org2ogr) and placed it at <http://efele.net/timeznp020.zip> (4MB, 15MB uncompressed); you can visualize it in Google Earth (File->Open); I assume that the built-in 1st level and 2nd level admin regions (under "borders") are close enough to statesp020 and countyp020. Below is my current recipe to build my map in terms of operations in the source maps. Comments welcome. Thanks, Eric. --- Phoenix timeznp020/(Mountain & no DST) Boise statesp020/(Idaho+Oregon) intersected with timeznp020/Mountain North_Dakota/Center countyp020/(Oliver County, North Dakota) North_Dakota/New_Salem countyp020/(Morton County, North Dakota) Indiana/Marengo countyp020/(Crawford County, Indiana) // should only be the eastern part of Crawford County? where is the // limit? where does the western part go? Indiana/Vincennes countyp020/(Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin, and Perry Counties, Indiana) Indiana/Petersburg countyp020/(Pike County, Indiana) Indiana/Knox countyp020/(Starke County, Indiana) Indiana/Winamac countyp020/(Pulaski County, Indiana) Indiana/Vevay countyp020/(Switzerland County, Indiana) Kentucky/Louisville countyp020/(Clark, Floyd, and Harrison counties, Indiana) // what part of Kentucky is in this zone? Kentucky/Monticello countyp020/(Wayne County, Kentucky) Indiana/Indianapolis ? // statesp020/Indiana minus what is already covered above minus // Dearborn and Ohio County (they are in America/New_York) and // minus Gibson, Jasper, Lake, LaPorte, Newton, Porter, Posey, // Spencer, Vanderburgh, // and Warrick counties (they are in America/Chicago) Menominee countyp020/(Dickinson, Gogebic, Iron, and Menominee Counties, Michigan) Detroit statesp020/Michigan minus what is already covered above Los_Angeles timeznp020/Pacific minus what is already covered above Denver timeznp020/Mountain minus what is already covered above Chicago timeznp020/Central minus what is already covered above New_York timeznp020/Eastern minus what is already covered above ----

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FW: Does UTC+14 Still Exist?
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 18, 2007

July 18, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Robert Chapin who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Robert Chapin [mailto:tz@info-svc.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 10:47 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Does UTC+14 Still Exist? The latest CIA map doesn't have the UTC+14 time zone on it.. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/reference_ma ps/p df/time_zones.pdf I'm curious if this is accurate? _____________ Robert Chapin

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FW: Vietnam: Saigon is deprecated, should use capital Hanoi
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 13, 2007

July 13, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Martin Pitt, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Martin Pitt [mailto:martin.pitt@ubuntu.com] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2007 2:27 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Cc: 121540(a)bugs.launchpad.net Subject: Vietnam: Saigon is deprecated, should use capital Hanoi Hello Arthur and tzdata team, we just got this tzdata bug in Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata/+bug/121540 which points out that "Saigon" has been renamed to "Ho Chi Minh" a long time ago. The comment in the asia file already mentions that: # Saigon's official name is Thanh-Pho Ho Chi Minh, but it's too long. # We'll stick with the traditional name for now. A nice solution to avoid obsolete names, retain a short name, and even get more consistent is to use "Hanoi", which is the actual capital of Vietnam (and is the very same TZ). Then Saigon could just be an alias (i. e. transitional symlink) to Hanoi. What do you think about that? Thank you in advance, Martin -- Martin Pitt http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer http://www.ubuntu.com Debian Developer http://www.debian.org

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FW: Localization of timezones from zone.tab
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 12, 2007

July 12, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Vincent Untz, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Vincent Untz [mailto:vuntz@gnome.org] Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:24 PM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Localization of timezones from zone.tab Hi, [please keep me cc'ed since I'm not subscribed to this list] I know that, at least in GNOME, there are now three places where we parse zone.tab to get a list of timezones supported by the OS. I suppose other projects are also doing this. This list is then presented to the user to let him choose the timezone. The problem here is that we let the user choose strings which look like "Antarctica/South_Pole". This is not really good for non-english-speaking people ;-) Of course, we can add all the timezones to our list of strings to translate, but this means all projects needing to do so will duplicate this work and the translations. I'd like the tz database to ship translations in po files. This would imply the following: + create a small script to generate a POT file from zone.tab (easy) + submit the POT file to the translation project [1] (or any other place that helps with translation) + add the po files for translation to the tz database + choose a gettext domain (Of course, I'm quite probably forgetting about a step :-)) I've seen that this topic has been discussed before [2], but the proposition there was really more ambitious, so I'm hoping a simple approach would be welcomed. What do you think? Thanks, [1] http://translationproject.org/ [2] http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.

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Is there a list of "current" time zones?
by Tim Klein July 11, 2007

July 11, 2007

I'm new here. As I look through the tz database, and the archives of this mailing list, I realize what a phenomenal effort you folks have put in, to make all of this information available. Thank you for all you've done! A question... I'm helping to write an application that needs a menu for the user to choose what time zone they live in. With ~400 time zones in the database, that'd be a pretty daunting pull-down menu. But as I understand it, a significant fraction of the ~400 time zones exist only for historical reasons. Since our application will deal only with current and future times, historical distinctions don't matter, and we'd like the menu to show only the subset of time zones that are currently "in effect". (And we don't mind if it isn't painstakingly accurate or updated in real time.) Has anyone created such a list? Or maybe an algorithm (if not code) for generating one from the full database? I see that this question has come up in the past. To quote from the archives... ====== >From: "Andy Lipscomb" <AndyLipscomb(a)decosimo.com> >Perhaps a better term would be "historical" time zones. This would >in fact be a useful distinction, since only a relatively small >subset of the timezones are necessary for applications that look >only forward--these would be the first set to present to a user for >selecting a time zone, with a "show all" option to get the complete >list. (For example, the 50 United States can be covered on a >forward-looking basis by eight zones--New York, Chicago, Denver, >Phoenix, Los Angeles, Anchorage, Adak, and Honolulu. And if one >takes as irrevocable the power of the EU over DST dates, then--for >example--London, Paris, and Helsinki would cover that entire area, >except for the different abbreviations used in the three +0 >countries.) ====== And... >From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU] >Sent: November 6, 2006 12:13 PM > >> Is there any way to flag some of the old historical zones such that >> they don't appear when running "tzselect"? > >We could have a table for people who don't care about historical >times, which maps zone names to "modern" zone names, and tzselect >could have an option to use that table. ====== Thank you very much for any wisdom on this subject! Tim Klein Dallas, Texas, USA

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FW: Time Zone mapping --> Windows ???
by Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] July 11, 2007

July 11, 2007

I'm forwarding this message from Boris Lang, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: BORIS LANG [mailto:BORIS.LANG@MEMO.IKEA.COM] Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 8:55 AM To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Time Zone mapping --> Windows ??? --- Received from IKEA4.BRLG +49 6122 5858276 07-07-10 14.56 -------------------------------------- Hi, we are working on the implementation of time zone information into an application using the tz database. TZ data names will be our main type but we also need to do a mapping to the time zone names used in windows. i.e. Europe/Berlin (tzd) --> Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna (Windows) The problem is that I can´t find a complete list that contains the mapping from tz database to windows. Can somebody please help us? Is there already such a list existing? Best regards Boris Lang ------ IKEA IT Germany GmbH Am Wandersmann 2-4 65719 Hofheim-Wallau Sitz München HR B 79392, Amtsgericht München Geschäftsführer: Manfred Godlewski, Göran Sjöstrand, Ola Troedsson ---- 07-07-10 14.56 ---- Sent to --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -> tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov

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Re: FW: Localization of timezones from zone.tab
by Mark Davis July 10, 2007

July 10, 2007

There is a users group at http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html#cldr_list. You can post suggestions/requests via the bug form on http://www.unicode.org/cldr/bugs/locale-bugs. If you belong to a Unicode member organization (http://www.unicode.org/consortium/memblogo.html) you can get on the internal list and even (if you choose) the weekly teleconference. Mark On 7/10/07, Chuck Soper <chucks2(a)veladg.com> wrote: > > Thanks for your response. I now remember meeting someone from IBM at an > IMUG meeting at Apple; he described metazones. > > What is the best way for me to stay informed of CLDR related to time > zones? And is there a way to make comments, suggestions or discuss? > > Chuck > > At 1:54 PM -0700 7/10/07, Mark Davis wrote: > > We have actually instituted an alternative mechanism called 'metazones', > which are somewhat like what you describe. They basically coalesce zones > that have the same behavior in modern time. However, they have some further > restrictions, and we only put this in recently thus haven't gathered enough > data to be useful yet. > > Mark > > On 7/10/07,* Chuck Soper* <chucks2(a)veladg.com> wrote: > > I've been on the tz list for several years. I have tried to follow the > Time Zone Localizations topic for CLDR. > > > I do not understand why translations would be supplied for timezone IDs > (tzIDs). Many tzIDs refer to the same time zone name. For example, I believe > that Argentina has 2 time zone names, yet it has 10 tzIDs to handle DST > rules for various states. Does this mean that 20 localized names would be > required for Argentina? Does this mean that a new tzID would not be > localized? > > > Looking at 381 tzIDs of a tzData version (from 2006), I multiply it by two > (for std and dst names) to obtain 762 time zone names required. By removing > names of tzIDs that do not recognize DST and removing tzIDs that refer to > the same time name (e.g. many tzIDs refer to Central European Time), I was > to reduce total time zone names from 762 to 212. > > > Can over 500 names can be removed from the translation list? Multiplying > 500 potentially unneeded names by the number of translations would result in > a large reduction of translation efforts. > > > My approach is dependent on having a stable list of time zone names. As > far as I know, such a list does not exist. If such a list existed, I would > envision tzIDs being mapped to the 'time zone name' list. > > > Chuck > > > > At 10:44 AM -0700 7/10/07, Mark Davis wrote: > > The Unicode CLDR project (http://unicode.org/cldr/) does supply > translations for timezone IDs. There are a few caveats. > > 1. The timezone database really has equivalence classes of IDs. One > of these can be used as a representative for any in the equivalence class. > It is the zone.tab file that contains such IDs. CLDR started by using that > file, but unfortunately it is not stable (different equivalent IDs can be > substituted at any time). So what we do is use as the representative the one > that historically the first one used in any zone.tab file (after CLDR > started). > > 2. We allow, but do not encourage, translation of zones that are the > only zone in a country. For that we use the country name. This cuts down > very substantially on the number of translations needed. That is, you would > see the equivalent of "Italy", and "United States (Los Angeles)" -- only in > the latter case do we need translations for the cities. > > 3. Translators can optionally add other variations: daylight (summer) > time, standard (winter) time, and generic time, both abbreviated and long. > > 4. These choices percolate out to clients of CLDR: Google, IBM, > Apple, Adobe, and many others. > > Mark > > On 7/10/07,* Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]* <olsona(a)dc37a.nci.nih.gov> > wrote: > > I'm forwarding this message from Vincent Untz, who is not on the time zone > mailing list. > > Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies > appropriately. > > --ado > > -----Original Message----- > From: Vincent Untz [mailto: vuntz(a)gnome.org] > Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:24 PM > To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov > Subject: Localization of timezones from zone.tab > > Hi, > > [please keep me cc'ed since I'm not subscribed to this list] > > I know that, at least in GNOME, there are now three places where we > > parse zone.tab to get a list of timezones supported by the OS. I suppose > other projects are also doing this. This list is then presented to the > user to let him choose the timezone. > > The problem here is that we let the user choose strings which look like > "Antarctica/South_Pole". This is not really good for > non-english-speaking people ;-) > > Of course, we can add all the timezones to our list of strings to > translate, but this means all projects needing to do so will duplicate > this work and the translations. > > I'd like the tz database to ship translations in po files. This would > imply the following: > > + create a small script to generate a POT file from zone.tab (easy) > + submit the POT file to the translation project [1] (or any other > > place that helps with translation) > > + add the po files for translation to the tz database > + choose a gettext domain > > (Of course, I'm quite probably forgetting about a step :-)) > > I've seen that this topic has been discussed before [2], but the > proposition there was really more ambitious, so I'm hoping a simple > approach would be welcomed. > > What do you think? > > Thanks, > > [1] http://translationproject.org/ > [2] http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html > > Vincent > > -- > Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. > > > > > -- > Mark > > > > > > -- > Mark > > > -- Mark

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Re: FW: Localization of timezones from zone.tab
by Mark Davis July 10, 2007

July 10, 2007

We have actually instituted an alternative mechanism called 'metazones', which are somewhat like what you describe. They basically coalesce zones that have the same behavior in modern time. However, they have some further restrictions, and we only put this in recently thus haven't gathered enough data to be useful yet. Mark On 7/10/07, Chuck Soper <chucks2(a)veladg.com> wrote: > > I've been on the tz list for several years. I have tried to follow the > Time Zone Localizations topic for CLDR. > > I do not understand why translations would be supplied for timezone IDs > (tzIDs). Many tzIDs refer to the same time zone name. For example, I believe > that Argentina has 2 time zone names, yet it has 10 tzIDs to handle DST > rules for various states. Does this mean that 20 localized names would be > required for Argentina? Does this mean that a new tzID would not be > localized? > > Looking at 381 tzIDs of a tzData version (from 2006), I multiply it by two > (for std and dst names) to obtain 762 time zone names required. By removing > names of tzIDs that do not recognize DST and removing tzIDs that refer to > the same time name (e.g. many tzIDs refer to Central European Time), I was > to reduce total time zone names from 762 to 212. > > Can over 500 names can be removed from the translation list? Multiplying > 500 potentially unneeded names by the number of translations would result in > a large reduction of translation efforts. > > My approach is dependent on having a stable list of time zone names. As > far as I know, such a list does not exist. If such a list existed, I would > envision tzIDs being mapped to the 'time zone name' list. > > Chuck > > > At 10:44 AM -0700 7/10/07, Mark Davis wrote: > > The Unicode CLDR project (http://unicode.org/cldr/) does supply > translations for timezone IDs. There are a few caveats. > > 1. The timezone database really has equivalence classes of IDs. One > of these can be used as a representative for any in the equivalence class. > It is the zone.tab file that contains such IDs. CLDR started by using that > file, but unfortunately it is not stable (different equivalent IDs can be > substituted at any time). So what we do is use as the representative the one > that historically the first one used in any zone.tab file (after CLDR > started). > > 2. We allow, but do not encourage, translation of zones that are the > only zone in a country. For that we use the country name. This cuts down > very substantially on the number of translations needed. That is, you would > see the equivalent of "Italy", and "United States (Los Angeles)" -- only in > the latter case do we need translations for the cities. > > 3. Translators can optionally add other variations: daylight (summer) > time, standard (winter) time, and generic time, both abbreviated and long. > > 4. These choices percolate out to clients of CLDR: Google, IBM, > Apple, Adobe, and many others. > > Mark > > On 7/10/07,* Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]* <olsona(a)dc37a.nci.nih.gov> > wrote: > > I'm forwarding this message from Vincent Untz, who is not on the time zone > mailing list. > > Those of you who are on the time zone mailing list should direct replies > appropriately. > > --ado > > -----Original Message----- > From: Vincent Untz [mailto: vuntz(a)gnome.org] > Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 1:24 PM > To: tz(a)lecserver.nci.nih.gov > Subject: Localization of timezones from zone.tab > > Hi, > > [please keep me cc'ed since I'm not subscribed to this list] > > I know that, at least in GNOME, there are now three places where we > parse zone.tab to get a list of timezones supported by the OS. I suppose > other projects are also doing this. This list is then presented to the > user to let him choose the timezone. > > The problem here is that we let the user choose strings which look like > "Antarctica/South_Pole". This is not really good for > non-english-speaking people ;-) > > Of course, we can add all the timezones to our list of strings to > translate, but this means all projects needing to do so will duplicate > this work and the translations. > > I'd like the tz database to ship translations in po files. This would > imply the following: > > + create a small script to generate a POT file from zone.tab (easy) > + submit the POT file to the translation project [1] (or any other > > place that helps with translation) > > + add the po files for translation to the tz database > + choose a gettext domain > > (Of course, I'm quite probably forgetting about a step :-)) > > I've seen that this topic has been discussed before [2], but the > proposition there was really more ambitious, so I'm hoping a simple > approach would be welcomed. > > What do you think? > > Thanks, > > [1] http://translationproject.org/ > [2] http://osdir.com/ml/time.tz/2004-09/msg00000.html > > Vincent > > -- > Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. > > > > > -- > Mark > > > -- Mark

2 1