> There is no way to automate this. The source material for the TZ
> database is human action — mostly the decisions of politicians, made up
> when they feel like it and announced anywhere from years to minutes ahead
> of time. The only possible way to update the TZ database is to find news
> about those actions, translate them from legalese into TZ syntax, and
> edit the database text.
>
> paul
No, I think he's suggesting having people manually set their clocks, andthen to build the rules for showing past timestamps retroactively bycollecting data from their manually set clocks. It's a ridiculous idea,but not for the reasons you are saying.
No, I'm suggesting that we collect data from systems that show user manual adjustments. There are many different uses for this data and I wasn't focusing on the use of current data, but of past time stamps. I'm a developer of software using astronomical calculations to accurately represent the sky and I have done this with my devices when they are wrong. Of course this will not solve the problem of future time zone info, but since it is the future, these are always guesses anyway and such info will only be as reliable as the political structure. If such a system could be perfected, we could at least take some of the workload off Paul for time changes up to the present.