On Wed, 02 May 2012, Tobias Conradi wrote:
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-September/008809.html http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-October/008937.html
Please could you explain the problems The problem is that the tz zones mentioned are wrong according to the definition in the Theory file, if the sources provided are correct. and the suggested fixes? They are here http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-September/008809.html search for "Suggested"
Sorry, it's still incomprehensible to me. (I am skipping over the Russian text, and reading only the English parts.) I see things like "Suggested new zone: Asia/Barnaul, split from Asia/Omsk" but I see no explanation of how the rules in the new Asia/Barnaul zone would differ from the rules in Asia/Omsk, or why. A little research tells me that Barnaul is the administrative centre of Altai Krai, which is a region of Russia, but that too was not explained in the message.
The links to archived messages are not helpful, To me they are.
because the archived messages do not contain clear descriptions of the problems
"That is the changes as written down in the Russian Wikipedia lead to contiguous zones at any time, while the current rules in tzdata do not."
Perhaps if I could read Russian, "the changes as written down in the Russian Wikipedia" would mean something to me. Could you translate?
- "changes" means "changes in offset from Moscow Time" - "zones" means "zones with same offset from Moscow Time"
I also did not understand your usage of "contiguous zones", because it was not clear that you were using "zone" in an unfamiliar way.
or suggested fixes. What is not clear about the fixes suggested in link #1?
The whole message was unclear. Perhaps if you translated the Russian parts, and wrote the English parts in full sentences, it would make more sense. Also, with my new understanding of what you meant by "contiguous zones", I may now be able to figure out the original messages, but I am not motivated to do so.
But anyway, as long as as one of the main maintainers makes up new rules on the fly ("The first order of business is to ensure that current (2012) time stamps are handled correctly throughout Russia.") every contributor may learn that suggested fixes are sometimes not integrated even if fully explained, for reasons that are not specified in the Theory file.
Regarding the first half of your sentence, I see no problem with one of the main maintainers deciding that it's more important to fix rules that affect current timestamps than it is to fix rules that affect timestamps in the past. I won't respond to the implied accusations in the second half of your sentence. --apb (Alan Barrett)