Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 12:23:43 -0400 From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
Link America/New_York Coords/+404251-0740023 Link America/New_York Descrips/US_Eastern_time
I need the countries separated out, and it would be nice to allow text in the description that is not a POSIX portable filename. Presumably the country could be the first 2 characters of the description, but I agree the character set (and length!) limitations are a bit much. I did play with the idea of putting the zone.tab data into the current tz data files themselves. This would be an incompatible change to the data file format, but it would have the advantage of having all the data associated with a Zone entry in one file, and minimizing duplication of strings like `America/Los_Angeles'. However, I couldn't find a format that I liked. Instead, I wrote a little program that checks for consistency between zone.tab and the traditional tz data files. To give you a feeling for what the data look like, here are my draft zone.tab entries for Canada and the US (the two most complicated countries). Order is important, since entries should be presented to the user in that order. The practical limit to the comments column is 75 characters -- I discovered this after I wrote a time zone selector and tested it on a 24x80 window. (This table is easier to read if you set your tab stops to every 24 characters.) CA +4734-05243 America/St_Johns Newfoundland Island CA +4439-06336 America/Halifax Atlantic Time - Nova Scotia (most locations), New Brunswick, Labrador & PEI CA +4612-05957 America/Glace_Bay Atlantic Time - Nova Scotia - places that did not observe DST 1966-1971 CA +6608-06544 America/Pangnirtung Atlantic Time - Northwest Territories CA +4531-07334 America/Montreal Eastern Time - Ontario & Quebec - most locations CA +4901-08816 America/Nipigon Eastern Time - Ontario & Quebec - places that did not observe DST 1967-1973 CA +4823-08915 America/Thunder_Bay Eastern Time - Thunder Bay, Ontario CA +6344-06828 America/Iqaluit Eastern Time - Northwest Territories CA +4953-09709 America/Winnipeg Central Time - Manitoba & west Ontario CA +4843-09429 America/Rainy_River Central Time - Rainy River & Fort Frances, Ontario CA +6245-09210 America/Rankin_Inlet Central Time - Northwest Territories CA +5024-10439 America/Regina Central Standard Time - Saskatchewan - most locations CA +5017-10750 America/Swift_Current Central Standard Time - Saskatchewan - midwest CA +5333-11328 America/Edmonton Mountain Time - Alberta, east British Columbia & west Saskatchewan CA +6227-11421 America/Yellowknife Mountain Time - central Northwest Territories CA +6825-11330 America/Inuvik Mountain Time - west Northwest Territories CA +5946-12014 America/Dawson_Creek Mountain Standard Time - Dawson Creek & Fort Saint John, British Columbia CA +4916-12307 America/Vancouver Pacific Time - west British Columbia CA +6043-13503 America/Whitehorse Pacific Time - south Yukon CA +6404-13925 America/Dawson Pacific Time - north Yukon US +404251-0740023 America/New_York Eastern Time US +421953-0830245 America/Detroit Eastern Time - Michigan - most locations US +381515-0854534 America/Louisville Eastern Time - Louisville, Kentucky US +394606-0860929 America/Indianapolis Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - most locations US +382232-0862041 America/Indiana/Marengo Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - Crawford County US +411745-0863730 America/Indiana/Knox Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - Starke County US +384452-0850402 America/Indiana/Vevay Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - Switzerland County US +415100-0873900 America/Chicago Central Time US +450628-0873651 America/Menominee Central Time - Michigan - Wisconsin border US +394421-1045903 America/Denver Mountain Time US +433649-1161209 America/Boise Mountain Time - south Idaho & east Oregon US +364708-1084111 America/Shiprock Mountain Time - Navajo US +332654-1120424 America/Phoenix Mountain Standard Time - Arizona US +340308-1181434 America/Los_Angeles Pacific Time US +611305-1495401 America/Anchorage Alaska Time US +581807-1342511 America/Juneau Alaska Time - Alaska panhandle US +593249-1394338 America/Yakutat Alaska Time - Alaska panhandle neck US +643004-1652423 America/Nome Alaska Time - west Alaska US +515248-1763929 America/Adak Aleutian Islands US +211825-1575130 Pacific/Honolulu Hawaii