- tz - lists.iana.org

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

May 18, 2012

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

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Terminology mismatch in tzcode file format manpage / header
by Andrew Paprocki May 17, 2012

May 17, 2012

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

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

May 17, 2012

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

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

May 16, 2012

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

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

May 16, 2012

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

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

May 16, 2012

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

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

May 16, 2012

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

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Propose to improve where to find rules for "Indian/Kerguelen"
by Tobias Conradi May 15, 2012

May 15, 2012

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

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

May 14, 2012

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

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Tz-announce list
by James Diebel May 13, 2012

May 13, 2012

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

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