From: Alois Treindl [mailto:alois@astro.ch] Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 11:11 AM
This is also why Thomas Shanks had created the International and American atlas. Tom is long gone from ACS, and they no longer maintain their database properly.
That's too bad. Their database is the best resource I know of for this area.
Defining more zones will not be enough. it must be possible to associate every populated place with the right zone.
Yes. We could have a geographical polygon associated with each zone. Ideally there should be justification for why the polygon is the way it is. The best free work that I know of in this area the time zone map information published by Manifold.net. The USGS also has some data for the US. I plan to add links for this in my next proposed tz patch. However, these maps cover only current data; they do not address historical issues. For more, please see: http://www.manifold.net/download/freemaps.html http://software.geocomm.com/data/intl_timezones.html http://www.nationalatlas.gov/timeznm.html
I would like to see the tz-database become THE reference source for this kind of information, but it is a long path of work. I might be able to contribute to this efffort, particularily after my scheduled retirement in mid-2002.
That's good news.
I would like to know whether there are any plans of a systematic nature to improve the quality of historical work in the TZ database.
Not yet, but we'd love to have your help.