Sept. 5, 2013
1:03 p.m.
I agree that changing the format of the zic input would make it considerably easier to maintain data, particularly the mass of pre-1970 data you're thinking about. But someone would need to come up with what the new input format actually is, and implement that change. I expect that we would use the new zic-input format only in the new "extended" zones that would be excluded from typical POSIX installations; this should lessen backward compatibility concerns.