Hi, let us consider what conventions for the number and separations of continents exist. According to
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Continent&oldid=1131827063#Number there exist (at least) five common conventions for the number and separation of continents:
a) 4 continents (Afro-Eurasia (Old World), America (New World), Australia, Antarctica b) 5 continents (Africa, Eurasia, America, Antarctica, Australia) c) 6 continents, combined-Eurasia (Africa, Eurasia, North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia) d) 6 continents, combined-America (Africa, Asia, Europe, America, Antarctica, Australia) e) 7 continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia) For the prevalence of these separations (prevalence of c)-e) taken from the linked section of the Wikipedia article) a) is to my knowledge motivated by geology c) is is mostly used in Russia and some parts of Eastern Europe. d) is taught in some countries where Romance languages are spoken and in Greece e) is the model taught in most English-speaking countries So the central question that the problem reduces to is: which separation of continents should tzdata implicitly endorse by its data structures? If I were to ask, I would immediately say a) because this is the only convention of this list that is motivated by science (geology) and not by politics or history, but this is just my personal opinion. Regards, Wolfgang Keller On Fri, Jan 6, 2023 at 9:52 PM Benjamin Drung via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
Hi,
debconf [1] for the tzdata Debian/Ubuntu package ask for the geographic area (e.g. Europe, Asia, etc) and then for the city inside this area. The resulting timezone is $area/$city. While working on the debconf template, I noticed that the America directory is the biggest with 157 cities. Having to find the correct city in that big list can take some time. The second biggest area is Asia with 90 countries.
The timezones are split by continent/ocean. The Afro-Eurasia continent is split into Africa, Asia, Europe, but America is not split into North America and South America. For consistency I suggest to split America into North America and South America to have all seven continents present [2].
The git repository already separate northamerica and southamerica files.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_configuration_system [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
-- Benjamin Drung Debian & Ubuntu Developer