I'm forwarding this message from Bill Unruh, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the list, please direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Bill Unruh [mailto:unruh@physics.ubc.ca] Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 6:35 To: Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] Cc: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: RE: Pacific-New On Sun, 22 Feb 2009, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:
The "pacificnew" file includes information about legislation that was introduced (but not passed) in the United States Congress; it serves to explain why a "Pacific-New" time zone was created in the first place. Note that the last line of the file is a "Link America/Los_Angeles US/Pacific-New" line, meaning that using either name now has the same effect.
I guess I object strongly to including legislative proposals into the tzdata files. If we introduce a new file and a new timezone everytime some government official makes some silly comment about time, the whole edifice will collapse under the weight of that garbage. While the tzdata file is not an official publication it is regarded as pretty authoritiative by most people using computers in the world. It should therefore strive to be accurate and authoritative, and not get bogged down with irrelevancies, and political commentary or jokes (which is the only thing I can imagine that the Pacific-New timezone to be).
As to jokes and idiocy: there used to be an obscure bit of word play
in
an strftime.c comment; it was eliminated in version 7.40.-)
Never saw it. I am not above jokes and wordplay but not when it extends to introducing new time zones in at least semi-authoritative publications. Are we going to get an Okeefenokie time zone because someone likes Pogo-- or a US/BUSH timezone (constantly set to midnight) as political commentary on the last president? That an ill-considered proposal popped up in Congress 20 years ago but was never passed should not be memorialised by a new time zone in tzdata. My response was triggered when a Suse user said his distro assigned Pacific-New to him. Having never seen it before (Mandriva wisely does not have it), I looked at the tzdata file and found it. Please please remove it.
--ado
-- William G. Unruh | Canadian Institute for| Tel: +1(604)822-3273 Physics&Astronomy | Advanced Research | Fax: +1(604)822-5324 UBC, Vancouver,BC | Program in Cosmology | unruh@physics.ubc.ca Canada V6T 1Z1 | and Gravity | www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/