Paul, I notice that Congressman Underwood is suggesting "ChST" as the human interface label for this new time zone. Are there any rules for the use of uppercase/lower case Latin-1 characters for labels for time zones? You state that POSIX allows for this. However, I would suggest that, we continue to use upper case only. Otherwise what is to prevent one source from using "ChST" and another source using "CHST"? Further by allowing lower case, one makes it easier to introduce the use of diacritics (e.g. é,ö,ñ, etc. IATA which assigns codes for pick-up and delivery points for airlines, a.k.a. commonly known as airport decided long time ago to use upper case A-Z based codes only. The reason I am raising these issues is because of the standardization work that I am doing in the area of Open-edi and modelling of components of business transaction as re-useable objects., i.e. work of SC32/WG1 (now commonly known a e-commerce, e-business, e-government, etc.) Let me give you an example, a buyer places a request for proposal( RFP)or a request for bid (RFB), states that one can submit them via paper & courier, via fax, vie e-mail and attachment, etc. but that all bids must be received by the bid receiving office at the locations/addresses specified "prior to 17:00 CST". Consequently, we need to be able to reference, unambiguously, the set of official time zones internationally as well as within a particular jurisdiction (e.g. USA). In this context my initial questions are: 1. Is there an "official list" of all the names or labels used to designated time zones 2. And their mapping to "+" or "-" offsets of Greenwich mean time? 3. If so, is this a referencable coded value domain? I will stop here and await your response. If anyone want to talk to me, you can reach me at +1-613-234-3244. Regards - Jake Knoppers
-----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@twinsun.com] Sent: January 8, 2001 6:51 PM To: rmcdow@enteles.com Cc: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Chamorro Standard Time (new US time zone)
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 23:33:41 -0800 From: Rives McDow <rmcdow@enteles.com>
Congress just added Guam and the Northern Marianas to the Uniform Time Act and is calling the time zone, "Chomorro standard time" (This is spelled differently in various sources, and I'm not sure of the final correct spelling.)
Thanks for the heads-up. The Congressional Delegate from Guam, Congressman Robert A. Underwood, issued a press release <http://www.house.gov/underwood/news-releases/00/1227000.html> (2000-12-27) saying:
* President Clinton signed it into law on 2000-12-23. * It's called "Chamorro Standard Time". * The Congressman will seek the use of "ChST" for Chamorro Standard Time, as "CST" is taken.
thomas.loc.gov says that H.R. 3756 became Public Law Number 106-564 on that day. The Government Printing Office does not yet have that law available, but H.R. 3756 did not specify an effective date, so I assume that the change was effective when it was signed into law, and unless we get better info I'll include it that way in my next proposed patch.
I'm pretty sure that "Chamorro" is right -- at any rate, that's the official name of the zone in H.R. 3756, regardless of how other people might spell the word.
This will be the first time zone abbreviation in our database that has a lower-case letter. POSIX allows this, so I guess it's OK.