Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu> writes:
"Nobody uses solar time any more for civil time. The last holdout was Saudi Arabia; they converted to UTC+3 in 1950."
so I'm not sure why we even still have the "solar{87,88,89}" files any more, as that seems to imply that they *didn't* use solar time in 1987, 1988, or 1989.
I think those files are there more as of a proof-of-concept than anything else. As far as I can determine, the Saudis use UTC+3 for all civil time, and have done so since 1950. For religious purposes they use direct astronomical observations to determine key times. In practice, many of these observations have turned out to be incorrect, which adds to the fun. The rest of this message isn't all that relevant to times, but it is relevant to anybody wanting to internationalize for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is different in many ways. Their religious calendar differs from their main civil calendar. And their main civil calendar not only differs from the Gregorian calendar: it also differs from the calendars used by Muslims outside the Arabian peninsula. To make things even more interesting, they changed their civil calendrical system in 1999 and again in 2002. One more thing: the Saudis use a solar zodiacal calendar for some civil purposes (the fiscal year, and their National Day holiday). Reference: Robert Harry van Gent The Umm al-Qura Calendar of Saudi Arabia (2003-09-11) <http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/islam/mecca/ummalqura.htm>