From: Robert Hodge [mailto:roberth@sisconet.com] Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 9:26 AM
I have had little success using the zic compiler or any of the source code, and have been forced to do my own parsing and analysis of the data.
What problems have you had with zic, or with the source code? The C source code itself is supposed to be portable; if you tell us exactly what problems you're having, quite likely we can fix it. Also, you can get prebuilt copies of zic with most GNU/Linux distributions, and commonly these can boot on any x86 platform without modifying your existing operating system. E.g., see Knoppix <http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html> or Ubuntu <http://www.ubuntu.com/>. Or, if C and/or GNU/Linux is too much hassle for you, there is a list of tz compilers written for other languages (C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby); see <http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm> and look for "Other tz compilers". The tz data notation itself could be extended, but it's unlikely that it would be changed in an incompatible way at this point, as there is too much existing practice.