Philip Warner <pjw@rhyme.com.au> writes:
Can someone confirm that zic is doing the right thing (which I kind of assume it is by definition), and perhaps give me a rule to follow when performing the %s substitutions?
It's doing what I wanted, anyway. Abbreviations like "FMT" refer to a mean time for a particular location (e.g., GMT for Greenwich, PMT for Paris). So the database has Sierra Leone observing Freetown Mean Time (53 minutes west of GMT) until West Africa Time was introduced in 1913. I think the general rule is that, before the first transition, you use the first standard-time abbreviation (not the first abbreviation, the first standard-time abbreviation). If the zic documentation doesn't say this clearly enough for you, perhaps you could propose a patch? That would help others grok it.