- tz - lists.iana.org

daylight saving time in the rubble of Grozny
by Paul Eggert Feb. 7, 2001

Feb. 7, 2001

John Daniszewski's story "Scavengers in the Rubble" in today's Los Angeles Times reports the following about Grozny, the capital of Chechnya: There is no electricity, running water or garbage collection. Other commonplaces of modern life, such as telephones, anesthetics and television, are almost nonexistent. News--often false--is spread by word of mouth. A rumor that it was time to move the clocks back put this whole city out of sync with the rest of Russia for two weeks--even soldiers stationed here began enforcing curfew at the wrong time. See: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates2/lat_grozny010207.htm Warning: Daniszewski's story is strong stuff. The quote above is one of the rare cheerful moments in it. The 100,000 citizens of Grozny have a terrible existence. I could not finish his story with dry eyes.

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by ArabSpiral Sales and Billing Feb. 6, 2001

Feb. 6, 2001

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Brand New E-Mail pager for FR-EE! 17798
by bigjoe＠japan.com Feb. 4, 2001

Feb. 4, 2001

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DST rule in California
by Jesper Nørgaard Feb. 4, 2001

Feb. 4, 2001

The official statute about time zone handling in Mexico has been issued, either yesterday or the day before, February 1. The links I have found is Newspaper Reforma: http://www.reforma.com/negocios_y_dinero/articulo/068587/ Portal Terra: http://www.terra.com.mx/noticias/nota/20010201/114738.htm Official statute published by the Energy Department: http://www.conae.gob.mx/ahorro/decretohorver2001.html#decre The only difference of what I have sent to the mailing list previously is that surprisingly Baja California (North) state is not following the new schedule, but instead follows normal Pacific Time as for instance the California state in USA. This means that it starts DST First Sunday in April 2001 at 2:00 and ends DST Last Sunday in October 2001, while most of the other locations in Mexico (with exception of the state of Sonora) starts DST First Sunday in May at 2:00 and end DST Last Sunday in September at 2:00. Regards, Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard(a)Prodigy.Net.mx Programador/Analista CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (5) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (5) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 CIMMYT home page: http://cimmyt.cgiar.org Check out my free program World Time Explorer: http://timezone50.homepage.com

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IERS Message No. 2
by central_bureau＠iers.org Feb. 1, 2001

Feb. 1, 2001

*************************************************************************** IERS Message No. 2 February 1, 2001 *************************************************************************** Dear colleagues The Web sites for the IERS EOP and ICRS Product Centers can now be reached at the following addresses: http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc for the EOP Product Center http://hpiers.obspm.fr/icrs-pc for the ICRS Product Center Kind regards, Daniel Gambis ***************************************************************************

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Time zones in the Global Gazetteer
by alan＠allm-geodata.com Feb. 1, 2001

Feb. 1, 2001

members of this list may be interested in the following extract from a recent newsletter that I sent out: <snip> TIME ZONES I have now included canonical time zone names in the Global Gazetteer. The canonical name (e.g. America/New_York) is then the key to time zone offset from GMT, and also the daylight saving time rules (date and time on and off), using the tztab format. There are still some gaps, most notably where the rule for assigning the name cuts across established administrative boundaries and also where I do not yet know the province and/or lower administrative areas within which the place falls. I am currently carrying out research to resolve these problems, but about 90% of records (including 'trains and boats and planes') now have canonical names assigned. Changes to zones and DST are regularly monitored and the records updated. There is a short paper on the web site that explains this in a bit more detail, describes all the various fields that are available, and explains the tztab format for DST rules. Other formats can be output if required. <end snip> I am not attempting to hold the wealth of historical data that the tz database holds. I am only interested in the current and future situation. There are two major problems that I am tackling: 1. the rather generic descriptions that are sometimes used in the tz data and trying to match these to my hierarchy of country/province/lower level admin area/town. For example 'far western Texas' or 'eastern Lugansk'. I am trying to clarify these where possible and will report back, if I find any useful information. 2. Completing the data that is in the Global Gazetteer, so that I can use the tz rules. This especially applies to countries such as Indonesia where many places do not yet have province name assigned, or in trying to find out which settlements fall within the county of Yancowinna in Australia Best wishes Alan Pritchard The GLOBAL GAZETTEER: the world on file http://www.allm-geodata.com Tel: +44 (0) 1202 417 477

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XBDd4 - tzset
by Garrett Wollman Jan. 31, 2001

Jan. 31, 2001

<<On Wed, 31 Jan 2001 12:34:07 -0500, "Seeds, Glen" <Glen.Seeds(a)Cognos.COM> said: > First, the daylight saving offset is not specified. Yes, we all "know" it's > an hour (to be ADDED, in this case), but a standard needs to specify this. Actually, we don't know that. Several places have observed one-half or two-hour shifts in the past, and there is no guarantee that the politicians will not come up with new ones in the future. An examination of the timezone database shows eighteen different locations where this has been done, of which one (Lord Howe Island) still uses a non-unity-hour summer-time adjustment. > It turns out that you can achieve all of this with mktime() and gmtime(). > Given that, perhaps a better strategy would be to guide applications toward > that, and away from tzset(). I agree, and I think the denizens of the timezone mailing-list (cc'ed) would probably agree as well. (Speaking as an implementor for a BSD-derived system that has never implemented and probably will never implement the `tzoffset' and `daylight' variables.) -GAWollman

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Indiana considers DST (NYT)
by Markus Kuhn Jan. 31, 2001

Jan. 31, 2001

Indiana Considers Synchronizing Its Watches, by PAM BELLUCK. The New York Times, 2001-01-31. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/national/31TIME.html?pagewanted=all Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

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FW: quality of historical zone information
by Olson, Arthur David (NCI) Jan. 29, 2001

Jan. 29, 2001

Alois Treindl is not on the time zone mailing list; direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Alois Treindl [mailto:alois@astro.ch] Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 11:11 AM To: tz(a)elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: quality of historical zone information Hi my company is an astrological computer service, and as you certainly know, astrologers are the only group of people for whom precise timezone information for any place, and any historical time is really essential. This is also why Thomas Shanks had created the International and American atlas. Tom is long gone from ACS, and they no longer maintain their database properly. Your site has become the essential source on timezone information. However, for historical work your data are insufficient in many areas. For example in Germany, there must be about 20 zones differentiated which have had a different timezoen history since the introduction of standard time. Th tz database has only a single zone info for Germany. For many other countries the same is true, e.g. for France, where there is a complicated historical pattern, especially during the years of the World War II and german occupation. Many US states have a very complex timezone history, and for some states several hundreds of 'zones' will be needed to reflect these data precisely. Defining more zones will not be enough. it must be possible to associate every populated place with the right zone. For example in the case of Germany, each village or city must be associated with one of the zones. Current organisational units, like districts or 'Laender' are not sufficient for that, because some towns have changed this association occasionally in the past, i.e. have changed the 'land' or disctrict to which they belong. I would like to see the tz-database become THE reference source for this kind of information, but it is a long path of work. I might be able to contribute to this efffort, particularily after my scheduled retirement in mid-2002. I would like to know whether there are any plans of a systematic nature to improve the quality of historical work in the TZ database. Best regards || Alois Treindl, Astrodienst AG, mailto:alois@astro.com || Zollikon/Zurich, Switzerland || Free astrological charts at http://www.astro.com/ || SWISS EPHEMERIS Free Edition at http://www.astro.com/swisseph/

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quality of historical zone information
by Alois Treindl Jan. 28, 2001

Jan. 28, 2001

Hi my company is an astrological computer service, and as you certainly know, astrologers are the only group of people for whom precise timezone information for any place, and any historical time is really essential. This is also why Thomas Shanks had created the International and American atlas. Tom is long gone from ACS, and they no longer maintain their database properly. Your site has become the essential source on timezone information. However, for historical work your data are insufficient in many areas. For example in Germany, there must be about 20 zones differentiated which have had a different timezoen history since the introduction of standard time. Th tz database has only a single zone info for Germany. For many other countries the same is true, e.g. for France, where there is a complicated historical pattern, especially during the years of the World War II and german occupation. Many US states have a very complex timezone history, and for some states several hundreds of 'zones' will be needed to reflect these data precisely. Defining more zones will not be enough. it must be possible to associate every populated place with the right zone. For example in the case of Germany, each village or city must be associated with one of the zones. Current organisational units, like districts or 'Laender' are not sufficient for that, because some towns have changed this association occasionally in the past, i.e. have changed the 'land' or disctrict to which they belong. I would like to see the tz-database become THE reference source for this kind of information, but it is a long path of work. I might be able to contribute to this efffort, particularily after my scheduled retirement in mid-2002. I would like to know whether there are any plans of a systematic nature to improve the quality of historical work in the TZ database. Best regards || Alois Treindl, Astrodienst AG, mailto:alois@astro.com || Zollikon/Zurich, Switzerland || Free astrological charts at http://www.astro.com/ || SWISS EPHEMERIS Free Edition at http://www.astro.com/swisseph/

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