Feb. 28, 2019
5:50 a.m.
Michael Douglass wrote: > On 2/26/19 17:17, Steve Allen wrote: >> On Tue 2019-02-26T20:00:54+0000 Paul.Koning@dell.com hath writ: >>> Once in a while it is suggested that all tzdb zones should be >>> identified by random unique integers, or something like that. I'm >>> more and more inclined to think that's a good idea, because it would >>> once and for all shut down this confusion. >> This seems to be a proposal to >> 1) Move the arguments to be Somebody Else's Problem, somewhere else. > Yes - but also to provide a mechanism that makes it less of a problem >> 2) Break a lot of existing interfaces to achieve that goal. >> >> I cannot begin to calculate the cost of 2) but given the number of >> downstream interfaces which use tzdb it seems likely larger than the >> cost of tolerating the discussions on this list. > > There's an easy backwards compatibility mode: > > 1. have a uid for every zone > > 2. Create a set of data mapping that uid on to names that look like the > current names > > 3. Provide a backwards compatability mode to take that file (or another > named file) and put the names back > > For unchanged downstream software it looks exactly the same. However now > we have disassociated the zones from the name. Downstream users are free > to create their own files if they wish and we can also set about finding > a owner for that name file (cldr perhaps?) Exactly. In the short term you have compatibility for existing applications, and in the long term you can reduce the confusion caused by names that are meant to be just identifiers, but not names to be displayed, from the names that really are to be displayed. I know the sentence above is confusing, but that exactly reflects the underlying problem. ;-) Martin -- Martin Burnicki Senior Software Engineer MEINBERG Funkuhren GmbH & Co. KG Email: martin.burnicki@meinberg.de Phone: +49 5281 9309-414 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinburnicki/ Lange Wand 9, 31812 Bad Pyrmont, Germany Amtsgericht Hannover 17HRA 100322 Geschäftsführer/Managing Directors: Günter Meinberg, Werner Meinberg, Andre Hartmann, Heiko Gerstung Websites: https://www.meinberg.de https://www.meinbergglobal.com Training: https://www.meinberg.academy