It is very important that when scheduling across timezones that users across those time zones use the same time zone definitions. FYI: The biggest OS and application vendors on Microsoft and UNIX have applications out -now- that understand VTIMEZONE. This includes Outlook, Lotus Notes, Netscape Calendar, Sun, and the list goes on. Oracle is active as are other database vendors. iCalendar and VTIMEZONE have been in the works for years. There are also many other vendors coming up now on the internet that are supporting this format. It would be a little less critical if the data was a month or two out of date. Each side if using VTIMEZONE, would know when it was going to happen. I could write a batch job that woke up once a week to see if the Olson database had changed, if it had, run the converter to VTIMEZONE and send IANA email. I think that IANA could also do this without my help. -Doug

From: CHancuff@aol.com Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 14:18:03 EST

In a message dated 2/4/00 9:48:42 AM Eastern Standard Time, Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk writes:

...

It is much less likely that the respective countries will report timezone changes directly to IANA officially.

I may be the very least qualified on this mailing list to comment (since the only other time I've posted concerned my intense interest in discovering the time zone observed by an island which spends 6 months/year underwater) but ...

I can see the advantage of having a web presence to which reports, rumors, and hearsay can also be reported, then brought to this list for scrutiny. Perhaps a form page, where such things can be entered.

I'm trying to imagine the "signal to noise" ratio of a central reporting venue like this one, but I can't. It might be worth a try.

Cliff Hancuff www.ClearDaySoftware.com

-Doug ------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug@Royer.COM http://royer.com/People/Doug Text Pager: pager@Royer.com 801 W. El Camino #131 Mountain View, CA 94040 Ham Radio: N6AAW, Aviation: PP-ASEL