It certainly could be more accurate, but definitely would be more confusing and would be unlikely to reflect the common thought "on the street" about exactly what changes were made and when. Although the actual legislation for Russia hadn't been passed as of 27 March 2011, there had been a presidential decree to similar effect as early as February (http://rt.com/news/daylight-saving-time-abolished/), so I feel that keeping the logical switch on that date makes sense. Just because a law was decreed on a given date, it doesn't mean that a transition *happened* on that date. -- Tim Parenti On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 13:22, Alan Barrett <apb@cequrux.com> wrote:
Yes, that what the tzdata files say. But is that an accurate reflection of what happened on the ground? The relevant legislation hadn't yet been passed on 27 March 2011.
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that there was a transition to daylight savings time on 27 March 2011, and then another transition from {base offset = +03:00, extra DST offset = 01:00} to {base offset = +04:00, no DST} on some later date when the new legislation took effect?
(And for some timezones, several back and forth transitions as the legislators changed their minds, each transition affecting our notion of whether or not DST was in effect, but not affecting the setting of clocks that lack isdst indicators and timezone abbreviation indicators.)
--apb (Alan Barrett)