Wally Wedel wrote:
I am just finishing up implementing some general time zone classes in Java. I parse your data files and build time zone classes from them. Consequently, I have a few questions.
1) You use the concepts of "wall clock", "standard", and "GMT" time in specifying transition times. I'd like to verify just what these mean. a) Does "wall clock" mean simply take the time as given applying no corrections? b) Does "standard" mean apply DST time shift to given time to find true time? c) Does "GMT" mean apply GMT offset to given time to get true time?
In essence, yes. For example, all DST transitions in the U.S. are defined by wallclock time: we transition at 2 AM defined by the prevailing time before the transition. Thus the EST "Spring Ahead" transition occurs at 7 AM GMT, whereas the corresponding "Fall Back" transition occurs at 6 AM GMT.
2) Is the convention for rule naming that when searching for the applicable rule, one looks for a rule with the specified name covering the specified date? I assume that failure to find a rule implies no time shift.
Yes.
3) The comments in the data files contain quite important information about the actual coded information. Have you considered converting them to HTML to get them better tagged? I'm particularly interested in tagging some kind of a long name usable in reports and like. I've been trying to figure out how to preserve them in an OODB so that they are properly associated with the data they describe.
They are just plain text. Remove the leading #, then any leading spaces, but preserve the CR breaks, and associate the whole block of comments with the following rule. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban