Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:25:00 +0000 (UTC) From: Progfou <jean-christophe.andre@auf.org> Message-ID: <loom.20080321T030037-405@post.gmane.org> | The "most populous" rule is totally arbitrary and a moving target. Arbitrary yes, any rule would be. And yes, it is a moving target, but in practice, changes because of this are very rare (Capital cities are also not fixed, they've been known to move from one place to another occasionally.) | Anyway, I propose a better rule specifically for simple case like a country | being in only one timezone: just use the name of the Capital City. At first glance, that sounds like it would be reasonable, but in practice, it doesn't work. For Vietnam there would unlikely ever be a problem, as the chances of Vietnam ever splitting into two timezones is negligible. But we're not going to make special case rules for Vietnam, nor attempt to guess which countries are such that a rule like that could apply. The problem is that a rule like that would (at least currently) apply to countries like India as well. Currently India has just Asia/Calcutta (which may be Asia/Kolkata after the next update), but by applying the "single zone" rule, it would have to be Asia/Delhi instead (maybe Asia/New_Delhi - that doesn't need to concern us right now). Then, if India later split into different zones we would be generating problems for ourselves. Imagine India split itself vertically approximately into halves. Then Asia/Calcutta (or Kolkata) would return for the eastern half, but the western would probably be Asia/Mumbai (and Asia/Delhi would vanish - or turn into a compatability link). The big advantage to the "largest population centre" is that it applies easily, and without much in the way of arguments, in all zones. What might be possible would be to support "political" links, as well as backwards compatability links, and perhaps have a rule that if there is no zone named for the capital of a country, a political link for it be created (linked to whatever is the "correct" timezone according to our rules). But I think we'd need to be firm about that only applying to countries, and not states/provinces/... within countries. kre