On Sep 22, 2013, at 3:54 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
Stephen Colebourne wrote:
I'm simply asking the tzdb to provide reasonable local time information since the start of global offset fixing for the IDs it provides
That's being done for McMurdo -- as far as we know, its entry is accurate for all time stamps used since it was founded, and (as Russ Allbery pointed out) for time stamps before McMurdo was founded and for which localtime is undefined, it's reasonable to interpret the new entry as being more "accurate" than the old.
The old entry said that Something Changed in 1956; the new entry says "just like Auckland". If nobody ever kept standardized time there before the station was established, then I wouldn't say the new entry is *more* accurate, as the answer to "what was the UTC offset and DST rules, if any, for McMurdo Sound before the station was established?" would, as I see it, be "mu!", so all possible answers other than failing are equally inaccurate. If there were people there who *did* keep standardized time between 1868-11-02 and {whatever the appropriate date is for the establishment of the station}, *and* they kept New Zealand time, then I *would* say the new entry is more accurate.