On Dec 29, 2018, at 11:43 AM, Tim Parenti <tim@timtimeonline.com> wrote:
On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 at 14:38, Zhanbolat Raimbekov <janbo87@gmail.com> wrote:
Why would we need to duplicate existing timezones? Our country has only two real timezones (+5 and +6). People in Qostanay oblast can just switch to +5 (Asia/Aqtobe).
Per the theory.html file, our guideline is to split zones where timezone history has diverged at any point since 1970.
...because the information in the tzdb isn't just used for converting the current time from UTC to local time, it's used for converting times in the past from UTC to local time, e.g. $ ls -ld ~/postponed -rw------- 1 gharris staff 5509 Oct 11 2007 /Users/gharris/postponed and, this having originally been developed for UN*Xes, "times in the past" go back at least to the UN*X Epoch, i.e. January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC.