Paul Eggert wrote:
Lester Caine wrote:
MY proposal is that if the database returns LMT then it is a flag that we are working with 'pre standard time' dates OK, although that's a different timestamp than the one Guy Harris was talking about. Guy Harris suggested a timestamp such that all clocks in the named region agree after that timestamp, and some disagree earlier. For Europe/Paris that would be some timestamp in 1945, I expect; that information is not in the database now, and although a number could be deduced from the Shanks & Pottenger data it'd be almost certainly incorrect. You want a timestamp such that time stamps before that date are LMT. For Europe/Paris that's a timestamp in 1891, which*is* deducible from the current database, and which is relatively reliable, at least for Paris. You should be able to implement the flag that you want, by consulting the current database.
And moving things forward it makes things logical? Prior to the adoption of a standard time, an individually calculated LMT is a more correct answer? The key fact here is simply when a standard time was adopted. Since you bring up Paris ( and I'll admit to not looking in the database here ... ) is French Railway time covered from 1891 to 1911 - INTERNAL station clocks were required to be set 5 minutes slow by law - so French. But I don't think we need a timezone per station :) And it always tickles me that they 'set French Standard Time back 9minutes 21 seconds' in 1911 rather than admitting to adopting GMT ... Now that is interesting ... I knew about the railway time, but not that shipping time did not change for another six months ... these newspaper archives make interesting reading. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk