Ah, that explains it. Thanks. Mark ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Eggert" <eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU> To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com> Cc: "Tz (tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov)" <tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov> Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 16:23 Subject: Re: Time Zone change in GEORGIA (Eastern Europe), time zone is now GMT+3 (no longer GMT+4)
"Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com> writes:
... can someone fill me in on why the TZIDs have an attached continent in the first place? The only thing I can see is that it may make the TZID slightly less ambiguous than just the city name
That's part of it. There were more mundane reasons, too. Subdividing into continents kept the "ls" listings on a single 24x80 screen. It also kept directory sizes small in the file system, which was a performance issue on the old SunOS box that I originally developed the naming scheme on.
I didn't know that there would be political controversies about which continent a location resides in. I knew about Istanbul, but there it's clear which half of the city is European and which is Asian.