On 2021-11-05 12:17:34 (+0800), Brian Park via tz wrote:
I get the impression that this debate is caused by the existence of 2 different schools of thought: [...]
I want to suggest that it may be possible for these 2 views to coexist.
They de facto coexist right now. The overwhelming majority of the data are descriptive. Only recent efforts have made some of the post-1970 data appear more prescriptive.
We could create a new file, e.g. call it 'countryzone', which contains a set of Links organized in a hierarchical tree by country, pointing to the Core zones.
I strongly believe we should continue to carefully avoid attempting to group data by country. [I would even avoid using the word "country" wherever possible.]
For the pre-1970 data, it is my understanding that the 'backzone' file contains Zone records which should replace ONLY the LinkMerged records found in the other files. I propose that all LinkMerged records be extracted into a separate file (let's call it 'mergedzone') so that there is a clear symmetry between 'backzone' and 'mergedzone', which allows them to be substituted for each other. The dependency diagram looks something like this:
As I've suggested before in another thread, I think we should consider undoing the split into backzone. I really liked Stephen's phrasing earlier in this thread: acceptably accurate, not outrageously wrong. We started moving data to backzone to limit the scope of 'active' maintenance to post-1970 data. That artificial split led us towards a more prescriptive worldview. It seems clear that prescriptive simply does not work for a real world with people on it.
If there is any chance that this will result in being able to type "Canada/Toronto" instead of "America/Toronto", that would resolve an annoyance that has lasted some 30-35 years.
In this context, America refers to the landmass, not to the political entity occupying a large chunk of it. [Canada/Eastern etc moved to backward around 1993, as far as I can tell.] Trying to group by country would only lead to (more) divisive arguments. I do support the notion that we should have at least one time zone identifier per ISO code though (whether or not that code refers to a country). Philip -- Philip Paeps Senior Reality Engineer Alternative Enterprises