Dear Paul, Here is an addition for the US. Congress just added Guam and the Northern Marianas to the Uniform Time Act and is calling the time zone, "Chomorro standard time" (This is spelled differently in various sources, and I'm not sure of the final correct spelling.) Rives
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 23:33:41 -0800 From: Rives McDow <rmcdow@enteles.com>
Congress just added Guam and the Northern Marianas to the Uniform Time Act and is calling the time zone, "Chomorro standard time" (This is spelled differently in various sources, and I'm not sure of the final correct spelling.)
Thanks for the heads-up. The Congressional Delegate from Guam, Congressman Robert A. Underwood, issued a press release <http://www.house.gov/underwood/news-releases/00/1227000.html> (2000-12-27) saying: * President Clinton signed it into law on 2000-12-23. * It's called "Chamorro Standard Time". * The Congressman will seek the use of "ChST" for Chamorro Standard Time, as "CST" is taken. thomas.loc.gov says that H.R. 3756 became Public Law Number 106-564 on that day. The Government Printing Office does not yet have that law available, but H.R. 3756 did not specify an effective date, so I assume that the change was effective when it was signed into law, and unless we get better info I'll include it that way in my next proposed patch. I'm pretty sure that "Chamorro" is right -- at any rate, that's the official name of the zone in H.R. 3756, regardless of how other people might spell the word. This will be the first time zone abbreviation in our database that has a lower-case letter. POSIX allows this, so I guess it's OK.
Paul, I notice that Congressman Underwood is suggesting "ChST" as the human interface label for this new time zone. Are there any rules for the use of uppercase/lower case Latin-1 characters for labels for time zones? You state that POSIX allows for this. However, I would suggest that, we continue to use upper case only. Otherwise what is to prevent one source from using "ChST" and another source using "CHST"? Further by allowing lower case, one makes it easier to introduce the use of diacritics (e.g. é,ö,ñ, etc. IATA which assigns codes for pick-up and delivery points for airlines, a.k.a. commonly known as airport decided long time ago to use upper case A-Z based codes only. The reason I am raising these issues is because of the standardization work that I am doing in the area of Open-edi and modelling of components of business transaction as re-useable objects., i.e. work of SC32/WG1 (now commonly known a e-commerce, e-business, e-government, etc.) Let me give you an example, a buyer places a request for proposal( RFP)or a request for bid (RFB), states that one can submit them via paper & courier, via fax, vie e-mail and attachment, etc. but that all bids must be received by the bid receiving office at the locations/addresses specified "prior to 17:00 CST". Consequently, we need to be able to reference, unambiguously, the set of official time zones internationally as well as within a particular jurisdiction (e.g. USA). In this context my initial questions are: 1. Is there an "official list" of all the names or labels used to designated time zones 2. And their mapping to "+" or "-" offsets of Greenwich mean time? 3. If so, is this a referencable coded value domain? I will stop here and await your response. If anyone want to talk to me, you can reach me at +1-613-234-3244. Regards - Jake Knoppers
-----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@twinsun.com] Sent: January 8, 2001 6:51 PM To: rmcdow@enteles.com Cc: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Chamorro Standard Time (new US time zone)
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 23:33:41 -0800 From: Rives McDow <rmcdow@enteles.com>
Congress just added Guam and the Northern Marianas to the Uniform Time Act and is calling the time zone, "Chomorro standard time" (This is spelled differently in various sources, and I'm not sure of the final correct spelling.)
Thanks for the heads-up. The Congressional Delegate from Guam, Congressman Robert A. Underwood, issued a press release <http://www.house.gov/underwood/news-releases/00/1227000.html> (2000-12-27) saying:
* President Clinton signed it into law on 2000-12-23. * It's called "Chamorro Standard Time". * The Congressman will seek the use of "ChST" for Chamorro Standard Time, as "CST" is taken.
thomas.loc.gov says that H.R. 3756 became Public Law Number 106-564 on that day. The Government Printing Office does not yet have that law available, but H.R. 3756 did not specify an effective date, so I assume that the change was effective when it was signed into law, and unless we get better info I'll include it that way in my next proposed patch.
I'm pretty sure that "Chamorro" is right -- at any rate, that's the official name of the zone in H.R. 3756, regardless of how other people might spell the word.
This will be the first time zone abbreviation in our database that has a lower-case letter. POSIX allows this, so I guess it's OK.
INFOMAN Inc. wrote:
Consequently, we need to be able to reference, unambiguously, the set of official time zones internationally as well as within a particular jurisdiction (e.g. USA).
In this context my initial questions are:
1. Is there an "official list" of all the names or labels used to designate time zones
No. There cannot be, see below.
2. And their mapping to "+" or "-" offsets of Greenwich mean time?
Unfortunately, the mapping is neither 1-1 nor language independent. For example, EST means UTC-0500 in the U.S., but UTC+1100 in Australia. Furthermore, the 3-letter zones used in TZ software are English-based, and often have nothing to do with the zone names used in non-English-speaking countries. Furthermore, many countries probably don't have official abbreviations, especially when they have only one time zone (the norm). All that is why TZ uses the continent/country form to specify zones. -- There is / one art || John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein
From: "INFOMAN Inc." <mpereira@istar.ca> Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 10:29:04 -0500
Are there any rules for the use of uppercase/lower case Latin-1 characters for labels for time zones? You state that POSIX allows for this.
POSIX.1-1996 says that an abbreviation cannot start with ':', and cannot contain ',', '-', '+', NUL, or a digit. Draft 5 (d5) of the next POSIX changes this rule to say that an abbreviation can contain only '-', '+', and alphanumeric characters in the current locale. To be portable to both sets of rules, an abbreviation must therefore use only ASCII letters, as these are the only letters that are alphabetic in all locales. The current Theory file says that only upper-case ASCII letters should be used, because that "follows most traditions". These traditions date back to when upper-case-only terminals were common. However, nowadays this is less of an issue, and it seems reasonable to relax this rule to allow lower-case characters. (Besides, who am I to second-guess a Congressman? :-) The current Theory file also suggests that "___" be used as the abbreviation when a location is uninhabited. Currently this convention is used only for Antarctic stations. "___" can be generated by a POSIX.1-1996 TZ string, but not by a d5 TZ string. I guess we should change "___" to some other abbreviation. "zzz" comes to mind, as uninhabited locations are, in some sense, asleep.
However, I would suggest that, we continue to use upper case only. Otherwise what is to prevent one source from using "ChST" and another source using "CHST"?
Nothing. But we already have the problem of different sources using different abbreviations. For example, for eastern time in Australia, some sources use EST, some AEST, and some EAST. The best we can do is pick the most commonly-used abbreviation. In the case of Chamorro Standard Time, we currently have only one reported use, which was in the December 27 press release of the Congressman who drafted the law. If common use turns out to be different, we can change it later.
Further by allowing lower case, one makes it easier to introduce the use of diacritics (e.g. é,ö,ñ, etc.
That wouldn't be portable, as discussed above.
1. Is there an "official list" of all the names or labels used to designated time zones
No, unfortunately. And in practice, the names are ambiguous. For example, "IST" means UTC+2 in Israel, but UTC+5:30 in India. Simiarly, "EST" has different meanings in the US and in Australia. Even if you limit yourself to Australia, "EST" can mean UTC+10 or UTC+11, depending on the time of year.
On 10 Jan 2001, Paul Eggert wrote:
1. Is there an "official list" of all the names or labels used to designated time zones
No, unfortunately. And in practice, the names are ambiguous. For example, "IST" means UTC+2 in Israel, but UTC+5:30 in India.
I have to take responsibility for that ambiguity as I coined "IST/IDT" circa 1988. Until then there were three different abbreviations in use: JST Jerusalem Standard Time [Danny Braniss, Hebrew University] IZT Israel Zonal (sic) Time [Prof. Haim Papo, Technion] EEST Eastern Europe Standard Time [used by almost everyone else] Since timezones should be called by country and not capital cities, I ruled out JST. As Israel is in Asia Minor and not Eastern Europe, EEST was equally unacceptable. Since "zonal" was not compatible with any other timezone abbreviation, I felt that 'IST' was the way to go and, indeed, it has received almost universal acceptance in timezone settings in Israeli computers. In any case, I am happy to share timezone abbreviations with India, high on my favorite-country list (and not only because my wife's family is from India). ___________________________________________________________________________ Ephraim Silverberg, CSE System Group, Phone number: 972-2-6585521 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Fax number: 972-2-6585439 WWW: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~ephraim E-mail: ephraim@cse.huji.ac.il
Hi, I work on an application which uses international timezone abbreviations. It makes sense to use the most popular abbr. used within the country, since, clients within the country understand that. I believe tzdata is the best source for this purpose, as people all over the world contribute to it. In our application we always use the abbr., in conjunction with the country, avoiding ambiguities. More examples are CST, EST and PST used both in Australia and US. Thanks -Syed -----Original Message----- From: ephraim@cs.huji.ac.il [mailto:ephraim@cs.huji.ac.il] Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 1:41 AM To: Paul Eggert Cc: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: IST/IDT [Re: Chamorro Standard Time (new US time zone)] On 10 Jan 2001, Paul Eggert wrote:
1. Is there an "official list" of all the names or labels used to designated time zones
No, unfortunately. And in practice, the names are ambiguous. For example, "IST" means UTC+2 in Israel, but UTC+5:30 in India.
I have to take responsibility for that ambiguity as I coined "IST/IDT" circa 1988. Until then there were three different abbreviations in use: JST Jerusalem Standard Time [Danny Braniss, Hebrew University] IZT Israel Zonal (sic) Time [Prof. Haim Papo, Technion] EEST Eastern Europe Standard Time [used by almost everyone else] Since timezones should be called by country and not capital cities, I ruled out JST. As Israel is in Asia Minor and not Eastern Europe, EEST was equally unacceptable. Since "zonal" was not compatible with any other timezone abbreviation, I felt that 'IST' was the way to go and, indeed, it has received almost universal acceptance in timezone settings in Israeli computers. In any case, I am happy to share timezone abbreviations with India, high on my favorite-country list (and not only because my wife's family is from India). ___________________________________________________________________________ Ephraim Silverberg, CSE System Group, Phone number: 972-2-6585521 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Fax number: 972-2-6585439 WWW: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~ephraim E-mail: ephraim@cse.huji.ac.il
Syed Sajjath wrote:
I work on an application which uses international timezone abbreviations. It makes sense to use the most popular abbr. used within the country, since, clients within the country understand that. I believe tzdata is the best source for this purpose, as people all over the world contribute to it.
The only point you should aware is that tzdata only handles English. And in the international context, there are some countries were English is not the most used language, even for computers. And I believe that collecting the "most popular abbr. used within a country" is not what the TZ group aims at; and furthermore, while it makes sense to collect tz datas for all countries, collecting the abbreviations makes less sense, particularly in the countries where only one timezone is in current use. Antoine
<<On Fri, 12 Jan 2001 16:17:09 +0100, Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr> said:
collect tz datas for all countries, collecting the abbreviations makes less sense, particularly in the countries where only one timezone is in current use.
Indeed, the entire notion of a standard timezone abbreviation makes little or no sense in many countries, and at times the tz database maintainers have had to go to some lengths to invent one appropriate for the location. (I imagine most French-speaking areas outside continental France make little distinction beyond ``heure locale'' and ``heure de New-York'' etc. -- and the English-language initialisms found in the tz database are of little value.) I'm curious, though... I know the tz library and database is in use by several commercial vendors with extensive localization programs (e.g., Sun). Do those vendors make an effort to translate the tz strings as well, so that `EST' and `EDT' in locale fr_CA come out `HNE' and `HAE'? If so, do they do it by providing a completely localized tz database, or a locally-localized one, or by applying some post-processing on the (English) strings in the standard database? -GAWollman
Garrett Wollman wrote:
(I imagine most French-speaking areas outside continental France make little distinction beyond ``heure locale'' and ``heure de New-York'' etc. -- and the English-language initialisms found in the tz database are of little value.)
Well, inside continental France, we have two concurrent uses: - the traditional system, which is "Heure de Xxx", where Xxx is either the name of a main town or of the geographical region ("Heure de l'Inde" for +0530 is the traditional example); - the modern system, in use by the agencies in charge of this (like "Bureau des E'phe'me'rides"), which is "T.U. + n" (or "TU + n"), where n is a number (T.U. means temps universel, that's UT in English). As we see, this is more akind from the ISO 8601 system than from the POSIX-like abbreviations... I do not know what are the use in Belgium, Switzerland, or the other French-speaking part of the the world. For Canada, there is a comment by Alain LaBonte' in northamerica that describes the abbreviations they are using.
I'm curious, though... I know the tz library and database is in use by several commercial vendors with extensive localization programs (e.g., Sun). Do those vendors make an effort to translate the tz strings as well, so that `EST' and `EDT' in locale fr_CA come out `HNE' and `HAE'? If so, do they do it by providing a completely localized tz database, or a locally-localized one, or by applying some post-processing on the (English) strings in the standard database?
I do not know. But in the Java libraries I looked at (some years ago), there were the concept of time zone abbreviations, without translations Even to the well-known Canadian abbreviations are not covered in ICU, <URL:http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/localeexplorer/en/...> Bottom line: it looks like that with computers, abbreviations are not often "localized", and that people stay with the ISO 8601 format instead (when not using English). Of course, GMT is a blatant counter-example! Antoine
Antoine Leca wrote:
Garrett Wollman wrote:
... I know the tz library and database is in use by several commercial vendors with extensive localization programs (e.g., Sun). Do those vendors make an effort to translate the tz strings as well, so that `EST' and `EDT' in locale fr_CA come out `HNE' and `HAE'? If so, do they do it by providing a completely localized tz database, or a locally-localized one, or by applying some post-processing on the (English) strings in the standard database?
I do not know. But in the Java libraries I looked at (some years ago), there were the concept of time zone abbreviations, without translations.
I looked at the source code in TimeZone.java. It contains a section of comments headed "Internal Implementation Notes". According to these comments, time zone names and abbreviations can be localized. Each time zone has an N-by-6 array of strings associated with it, where N is the number of locales supported. The six columns are an internal ID, full and abbreviated name for standard time, full and abbreviated name for daylight time, and representative city. These names are stored as localized resource data of the class java.text.resources.DateFormatZoneData???, where ??? is the locale specifier, such as _fr_CA. The notes go on to say, "Since we support approximately 90 time zones and approximately 50 locales, there can be over 4500 sets of localized names. In practice, only a fraction of these names are provided." (I think the figure 90 is outdated, because the source code generates 320 SimpleTimeZone objects. 289 of these have names like America/Los_Angeles; the other 31 are "aliases" for some of the 289, with names like PST.) For names that aren't provided, the default display is something like GMT-0800. Am I right to conclude that each Java user is responsible for acquiring or creating his or her own set of localized names? Yours, Gwillim Law
Antoine Leca wrote:
But in the Java libraries I looked at (some years ago), there were the concept of time zone abbreviations, without translations.
As I looked at Gwillim Law's answer, I notice that I badly expressed my ideas. When I wrote "without translations", I intented to mean that no translation were provided (at that time); I should have made clear that translation was in fact forcasted. I am sorry to have been so inacurate. Gwillim Law wrote:
I looked at the source code in TimeZone.java.
Good thing, as I said I did not.
These names are stored as localized resource data of the class java.text.resources.DateFormatZoneData???, where ??? is the locale specifier, such as _fr_CA.
But are these datas really provided (with localized contents)? Antoine
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 16:17:09 +0100 From: Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr> Message-ID: <3A5F1FF5.38861E09@renault.fr> | particularly in the countries where only one timezone is in current use. Yes, people in Thailand have been somewhat amused to learn what the "ICT" that appears in their ctime() output is all about... kre
participants (10)
-
Antoine Leca -
Ephraim Silverberg -
Garrett Wollman -
Gwillim Law -
INFOMAN Inc. -
John Cowan -
Paul Eggert -
Rives McDow -
Robert Elz -
Syed Sajjath