On 5 September 2013 15:15, Zefram <zefram@fysh.org> wrote:
Stephen Colebourne wrote:
My primary concern is ensuring that the backward file is removable - ie. no other files contain the "inactive" backward Link entries.
These statements don't match. For the "backward" file to be removable what you need is that the "backward" file does not contain any "active" entries. No other files containing "inactive" entries is what's needed to have an easy way of feeding only "active" entries to zic. Maybe you want both of these things?
I'd also like to see the active and inactive links distinguished somehow, for internal clarity. I'm not so concerned about the mechanism by which they're distinguished, but segregating them fully by file certainly has its attractions. FWIW, my winnowing branch effectively distinguishes between active and inactive links for geographical zones by whether it includes population data. (It doesn't thus distinguish active/inactive non-geographical zones.)
The backward file contains this line for example: Link Asia/Kolkata Asia/Calcutta I'm simply arguing that the Asia/Calcutta ID should only appear in backward, with Asia/Kolkata being used everywhere else. That way, excluding the backward file has no effect other than removing "no longer desirable" IDs. Stephen