Chris Carrier wrote:
Markus G. Kuhn wrote:
I do not have very strong feelings about the optionality of the minute offset, but my arguments for it are:
- only *very* few countries use it today and time zones are so often redefined that there is some good hope that the 30-min offset zones will disappear in 2020 or so.
I would make minute offsets mandatory, because we are discussing not only contemporary but historical time zone data, when minute offsets were more common.
If you consider this as an option, you should add the seconds offset! Until 1978 (?) for some applications, Paris time was in official use; and it's defined as GMT+00:09:21 (I don't know what happen with the 10 leap seconds on 1972-01-01 ;-). On the other side, I don't consider it's worth the value, if you want MHO.
Also IMHO minute offsets are not necessarily a Bad Thing; a small country without any of its territory going through an hourly meridian but with territory going through a minute offset might be better served by the minute offset zone; Portugal and Ireland, for example, fit GMT-0:30 closer than GMT or GMT-1.
I won't count India as a small country :-), but I understand this is the very reason for this country to be in a half-hour offset (I think the other options is to have two time zones, clearly a bad thing, or advantaging a side of the country instead of the other...) Antoine