On 4 September 2013 22:32, Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
On Sep 4, 2013, at 2:23 PM, Garrett Wollman <wollman@csail.mit.edu> wrote:
I do think, on a more general level, that it is a bit unfortunate that the format of the tzdata files is now effectively frozen because so many external users have chosen to parse the source rather than the compiled form. This will make it much more difficult to make changes in the future, should they be needed.
If we want to do that (e.g., if we were to introduce the CLDR concept of meta-zones into the tzdb, so that the CLDR doesn't have to duplicate transition time/date information that's in the tzdb - see the usesMetazone items in metaZones.xml), we might end up creating a new source file format and have a tool that reads the new format and emits the old format.
Just to note that I parse the source tzdb because the binary data does not contain all the data AFAIK. A new source format that generates a file in the old format would work so long as the distribution contained the generated old format files. Stephen