- tz - lists.iana.org

Re: time zone survey
by guy＠auspex.com June 11, 1993

June 11, 1993

> (Yes, in SysV the file has to be changed every > year again. And SGI shows no inclination to change.) Actually, I think SVR4 includes the Olson code, although I don't think all SVR4.0 systems supply the Olson files. However, I infer from one of Eric Raymond's lists of SVR4 bugs that SVR4.2 does supply the Olson files *and* uses Olson-style timezone specifications (":" followed by the time zone file name) by default. (The bug was that SVR4.0 binaries allegedly don't work with SVR4.2 time zone names, an example of which was given as "US/Eastern" or something such as that; that seems a *tad* bizarre, as if SVR4.0 has the Olson code, SVR4.0 statically-linked binaries should be able to handle Olson-style names, and SVR4.0 dynamically-linked binaries should use SVR4.2 shared libraries and should thus also be able to handle them. Perhaps the bug was that SVR3.x binaries don't handle Olson-style names.) SVR4 uses "/etc/TIMEZONE", but you can set TZ to ":MET" and you shouldn't have to change it every year. (Also, SVR4 should also support POSIX-style TZ settings, which should allow you to put in a value that doesn't require periodic updates *if* your locale's DST rules are sufficiently "regular" that they can be encoded in the TZ setting. I don't know which SVR3.x systems, if any, supported that.) If, as, and when IRIX goes to an SVR4 base, they should probably pick up the Olson code with it.

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Re: time zone survey
by Dik.Winter＠cwi.nl June 11, 1993

June 11, 1993

> Attached are results from a casual time zone survey. An interesting survey. > I tossed out data with unzoned time stamps, data without a recognizable > domained system name in the Message-ID, and data from ".com" sites. Why did you toss out data from ".com" sites? > 1 +0530 > 1 Jun 93 15:30:55 +0530 imtech.ernet.in This might be a valid one. It is apparently from India which lives around +5 and +6. > 1 +0611 > Wed, 02 Jun 93 16:08:33 +0611 trashcan.hacktic.nl This one is definitely invalid. Most probably a PC hooked up to hacktic (a public access system in the Netherlands). Probably the owner did set it up wrong. > 1 +0730 > 6 Jun 1993 08:25:56 +0730 news.Colorado.EDU Ha! If even Colorado.Edu cannot get it correct! ;-). > MESZ Middle European Standard Zone Probably "Mittel Europ"aische Standard Zeit". > MEZ Middle European Zone (used primarily in Germany) "Mittel Europ"aische Zeit". And yes, primarily german speaking countries. > BSC ? > Tue, 25 May 1993 10:51:05 BSC FINHUTC.HUT.FI > Tue, 1 Jun 1993 11:57:00 BSC brfapesp.bitnet These two are definitely not in the same timezone. One is in Finland, one in Brazil. > TUR Turkey? Probably yes. All sites are in Turkey. > The results make me think there's little prospect of discovering useful > time zone information (in particular, time transitions that don't already > show up in tzdata93c.tar.Z) from running through news articles; someone > with an account on a site that does extensive archiving of news might prove > me wrong. I think there is no prospect at all. And it will grow worse. In the case of the "hacktic.nl" machine we see that we have a single machine that is configured wrong. I think more of this kind of machines will emerge. They do not care what time the system runs on, as long as it is internally consistent (and even that is not needed at all times). Time transitions especially will be a problem, and it will continue to be a problem. At our institute during the transition to DST all Suns (which use your package) switched on time, but all SGI's (using SysV's method) did not. The system administrator simply had forgotten to update the file that contained timezone information (/etc/TIMEZONE) and it took a few days before somebody noticed. (Yes, in SysV the file has to be changed every year again. And SGI shows no inclination to change.) So I think nobody will prove you wrong.

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Re: "32 time zones"
by Amos Shapir June 9, 1993

June 9, 1993

> I don't know about any zones with > three-quarter hour offsets, but would like to know what they are. >From the same usno1989 file (which is outdated and contains errors, but seems to be the most comprehensive source we have): NEPAL 5H45M AHEAD OF UTC NEW ZEALAND 12H45M AHEAD OF UTC CHATHAM ISLAND In the Rand-McNally atlas there are a few other Pacific islands with 40 mins offsets, all of which appear as full or half-hour zones in the file; it also lists Nepal at GMT+5:40 and Liberia as -0:44 (yes, forty four) -- makes sense since Monrovia is at exactly 11 degrees west, but probably outdated too. Amos Shapir Net: amos(a)cs.huji.ac.il Paper: The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Dept. of Comp. Science. Givat-Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel Tel: +972 2 585706 GEO: 35 11 46 E / 31 46 21 N

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"32 time zones"
by ado June 8, 1993

June 8, 1993

Our society has created a fictional time system of 32 time zones (24 one-hour offsets and several more half-hour and three-quarter hour offsets). --Tognazzini, Bruce (tog(a)eng.sun.com) "Tog on Interface: The Myth of Precision", Sun World, volume 6, number 7 (June, 1993), page 100. A grep in /usr/lib/zoneinfo/* on a SunOS 4.1.1 system failed to show up eight oddball time zones (see attached). Does anyone know of the origin for the "32" time zones? --ado

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Re: "32 time zones"
by tog＠cloud9.Eng.Sun.COM June 8, 1993

June 8, 1993

Well, so much for my books are better than computers theory. Still and all, I can think of no atlas that would manage to tell one person there were 24 zones and another person there were 40 zones. We have a long way to go not only in information storage, but in responsive retrieval. -Tog > From amos(a)cs.huji.ac.il Tue Jun 8 07:02:26 1993 > To: ado(a)bossie.nci.nih.gov (Arthur David Olson) > Subject: Re: "32 time zones" > Cc: tog@Eng, tz(a)bossie.nci.nih.gov > Content-Length: 579 > X-Lines: 13 > > Well, you didn't grep hard enough; I just did: > > grep '[.H][0-9]' /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/usno1989 > > And got 11 part-hour zones, 3 of which apply DST which can be also counted as > separate timezones; plus Russia's East Siberia zone which is 13 hours ahead of > GMT and 14 with DST. In total, we have 24+12+4 or 40 time zones, 36 of which > are in use somewhere at any given time. > > Amos Shapir Net: amos(a)cs.huji.ac.il > Paper: The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Dept. of Comp. Science. > Givat-Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel > Tel: +972 2 585706 GEO: 35 11 46 E / 31 46 21 N >

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Re: "32 time zones"
by tog＠cloud9.Eng.Sun.COM June 8, 1993

June 8, 1993

Try any (printed) atlas. Or wait until the next century when computers just barely begin to catch up with where printed matter was 300 years ago. Grepping indeed! -Tog > From ado(a)bossie.nci.nih.gov Tue Jun 8 06:40:56 1993 > To: amos(a)cs.huji.ac.il, tog@Eng, tz(a)bossie.nci.nih.gov > Subject: "32 time zones" > Content-Length: 481 > X-Lines: 13 > > Our society has created a fictional time system of 32 time zones > (24 one-hour offsets and several more half-hour and three-quarter > hour offsets). > > --Tognazzini, Bruce (tog(a)eng.sun.com) "Tog on Interface: > The Myth of Precision", Sun World, volume 6, number 7 > (June, 1993), page 100. > > A grep in /usr/lib/zoneinfo/* on a SunOS 4.1.1 system failed to show up eight > oddball time zones (see attached). Does anyone know of the origin for the > "32" time zones? > > --ado >

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Re: "32 time zones"
by Amos Shapir June 8, 1993

June 8, 1993

Well, you didn't grep hard enough; I just did: grep '[.H][0-9]' /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/usno1989 And got 11 part-hour zones, 3 of which apply DST which can be also counted as separate timezones; plus Russia's East Siberia zone which is 13 hours ahead of GMT and 14 with DST. In total, we have 24+12+4 or 40 time zones, 36 of which are in use somewhere at any given time. Amos Shapir Net: amos(a)cs.huji.ac.il Paper: The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Dept. of Comp. Science. Givat-Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel Tel: +972 2 585706 GEO: 35 11 46 E / 31 46 21 N

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tzcode93c.tar.Z and tzdata93c.tar.Z
by ado June 6, 1993

June 6, 1993

The latest versions of the time zone stuff are available in the files tzcode93c.tar.Z and tzdata93c.tar.Z in the ~ftp/pub directory on elsie.nci.nih.gov (128.231.16.1). --ado

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Revised draft strftime.c
by ado May 30, 1993

May 30, 1993

An updated draft is available on elsie.nci.nih.gov as ~ftp/pub/draft-strftime.tar.Z, which includes strftime.c and the header files it references. The draft version incorporates the shift to use of sprintf to generate output. This makes the code simpler; it may irk folks who get the standard input/output library dragged in when they call strftime. The handling of "%D" and "%x" have been separated so that they can be changed independently. Right now they're still treated identically in the code; comments have been added giving other possibilities for "%x" handling. The worry is that some piece of code out there is counting on the current "%x" behavior and will break if it is changed. (Yes, counting on "%x" behavior is worng.) As always, any comments are welcome. --ado

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more on ISO date format
by eggert＠spot.twinsun.com May 30, 1993

May 30, 1993

I did some more research on ISO date format, and discovered that the ISO 2014 standard has been superseded by ISO 8601:1988. The date format hasn't changed, however. You can find a summary of ISO 8601:1988 in ftp.uni-erlangen.de:pub/doc/ISO/english/ISO8601.ps.Z.

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