Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 12:26:55 +0100 From: Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr> However, it is safe to use it [PS] when designating this "country". As it seems that PNA have the relevant authority in matter of timezones, I think this is what we should use. That sounds good. I'll include your changes in this area into my next proposed patch to the .tab files. In France, the name is without any doubt "Terres australes et antarctiques francaises" (with a cedilla below the c in francaises; this is sometimes spelled "Terres Australes et Antarctiques Francaises", but I regard this as a minor spelling error, as capitals are not needed in French here). This can be translated to English as you do. However, the ISO 3166 text seems to say "French Southern Territories" (in the English version) By design, iso3166.tab does not contain the official ISO 3166 text; it contains names useful for English-speaking users of programs like tzselect to choose time zone names. Typically the names are the same, but when the ISO 3166 names are too long for tzselect to put into columns, or might be confusing when presented in tabular form, I felt free to adjust them. With this in mind, I think ``French Southern & Antarctic Lands'' is slightly better than ``French Southern Territories''. The former term is not only closer to the original French, it is also clearer to the typical English-speaker who might otherwise think that ``French Southern Territories'' means Corsica or Marseilles. :-) Also, in zone.tab, we list Dumont d'Urville base under the code AQ, and not under TF. This is reflecting the opposite position to the use of your name... This is a somewhat delicate issue, but my understanding is that, as one of the original signatories of the Antarctic Treaty, France has agreed to suspend its territorial claims, just like New Zealand, Australia, etc. So, as a practical matter, Dumont d'Urville is more like the other entries under AQ than it is like Indian/Kerguelen. I agree that the political ice is a bit thin here, and that France is a special case because of the distinction between FR and TF. However, it still seems to me to be more practical to leave Antarctica/DumontDUrville in AQ, particularly since one of the goals of the table is to map points like Antarctica/DumontDUrville to locations inside polygons that correspond to country codes like AQ.