Re: New Mail List - timezones.external@software.com
From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM The timezones.external@software.com list is for public discussion of timezone information. How does that mailing list's charter differ from that of tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov, which is a list for public discussion of time zone information that has been in use since 1986? I visited www.software.com, but found no discussion of the new list. How does one join, or view its message archive? IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones. How and why will this administration differ from the process already in place for the existing time zone database? 1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic). On 1998-07-16 Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr> wrote that he was implementing (1); you might ask him how far he got. 2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer. Isn't conversion automatic? If so, why would two databases need to be administered separately? One database should be generated automatically from the other. And if someone want to volunteer - make a converter to go from VTIMEZONE format to zic input format to keep the databases in sync. Why would this be necessary, if conversion is automatic? FYI, here is a brief summary of existing sources for time zone data: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm And here is a copy of the tz mailing list archive: ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzarchive.gz
At 18:31 -0800 2000-02-03, Paul Eggert wrote:
From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM [snip] IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones.
What are IANA and the IETF? [snip]
1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OSes and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIXes use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic).
Which other OSes? What is the VTIMEZONE format?
On 1998-07-16 Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr> wrote that he was implementing (1); you might ask him how far he got.
To which OSes was Antoine porting them and was he also providing the data in VTIMEZONE format? Alex _______________ Alex LIVINGSTON IT, Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), Sydney Fax: +61 2 9931-9349 / Phone: +61 2 9931-9264 / Time: UTC + 10 or 11 h. It's the 2000th year, 200th decade, 20th century, and 2nd millennium - the last year of the last decade of the last century of the millennium. (But it's no longer 1999, the 1990s, the 1900s, or the 1000s.) Years since epoch (1-1-1 at 00:00:00) at midday today (Feb. 4): 1999.09238382 Provisional iweaq date: 2000-1g3 (Year-QuarterWeekDay) - day before mid-quarter day, close to northern "rise of spring" (southern "rise of fall"?)
Alex LIVINGSTON wrote:
At 18:31 -0800 2000-02-03, Paul Eggert wrote:
From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM [snip] IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones.
What are IANA and the IETF?
see: www.iana.org www.ietf.org In brief: The IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force. They are the standards body that does, TCP, UDP, DHCP, FTP, EMail, HTTP, ..... There are about 2000 standards, proposed standards, and interface definitions. And IANA is the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. They control that port 25 is email, 79 finger, ... They also control the tag names for MIME, and other internet related interoperability protocols.
[snip]
1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OSes and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIXes use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic).
Which other OSes? What is the VTIMEZONE format?
Part of a proposed standard for interoperable calendars. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2446.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2447.txt and: http://www.ietf.org/ids.by.wg/calsch.html
On 1998-07-16 Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr> wrote that he was implementing (1); you might ask him how far he got.
To which OSes was Antoine porting them and was he also providing the data in VTIMEZONE format?
Alex
_______________ Alex LIVINGSTON IT, Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), Sydney Fax: +61 2 9931-9349 / Phone: +61 2 9931-9264 / Time: UTC + 10 or 11 h.
It's the 2000th year, 200th decade, 20th century, and 2nd millennium - the last year of the last decade of the last century of the millennium. (But it's no longer 1999, the 1990s, the 1900s, or the 1000s.)
Years since epoch (1-1-1 at 00:00:00) at midday today (Feb. 4): 1999.09238382
Provisional iweaq date: 2000-1g3 (Year-QuarterWeekDay) - day before mid-quarter day, close to northern "rise of spring" (southern "rise of fall"?)
] At 18:31 -0800 2000-02-03, Paul Eggert wrote: ] > From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] ] > Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM ] [snip] ] > IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names ] > of world wide time zones. ] ] What are IANA and the IETF? The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, http://www.iana.org/. Its responsibilities are being transitioned to ICANN by Sept 2000. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' web site is http://www.icann.org/. Probably the most relevant part for time zone names administration would be the ICANN Protocol Supporting Organization http://www.icann.org/pso/pso.htm. The Internet Engineering Task Force is at http://www.ietf.org/. My understanding is that the IETF is more interested in developing standards and architechtures for Internet Protocols and such, rather than maintenance of data (like time zone names and rules). Last time I looked, IANA wasn't part of the IETF. It might be worth investigating whether the ICANN PSO would be interested in providing a sort of umbrella for this group. I expect they would want to leave the detective work largely to us (ie: get out of the way and let us do our job) but they might be interested in giving an official rubber stamp to high level policies like the naming convention for time zone names (using the most populated city and all that). That way if people come to us and say "but it should be Brazil/Brasilia rather than America/Sao_Paulo" we can say "Sorry, that's ICANN policy. If you feel really strongly about it, you can go and lobby ICANN PSO." At which point, 99% of people won't take it any further. __________________________________________________________________________ David Keegel <djk@cyber.com.au> URL: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/ Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management
At 06:31 PM 2/3/00 -0800, Paul Eggert wrote:
I visited www.software.com, but found no discussion of the new list. How does one join, or view its message archive?
Send a message to timezones.external-request@software.com and include the word "subscribe" in the message body. Sorry if I've spoiled a right of passage. The "-request" suffix is pretty standard fare. -- G. Del Merritt dmerritt@intranets.com http://www.intranets.com - Get Everyone on the Same Page(sm)
Paul Eggert wrote:
From: Doug Royer [SMTP:doug@home.royer.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 6:47 PM
The timezones.external@software.com list is for public discussion of timezone information.
How does that mailing list's charter differ from that of tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov, which is a list for public discussion of time zone information that has been in use since 1986?
I visited www.software.com, but found no discussion of the new list. How does one join, or view its message archive?
It was at the end of the message: ----------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe, send mail to timezones.external-request@software.com with 'subscribe' in the body of the message. -----------------------------------------------------------------
IANA as part of the IETF is looking into administrating the names of world wide time zones.
How and why will this administration differ from the process already in place for the existing time zone database?
It will control the names of the timezones in RFC-2445 format.
1) Port the government database and 'zic' (Zone Information Compiler) to other OS's and have it also provide the data in VTIMEZONE format. Most UNIX's use the government database format and the zic compiler (man zic).
On 1998-07-16 Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr> wrote that he was implementing (1); you might ask him how far he got.
I send email and ask. So far it only runs on UNIX (that I have seen) and does not producde RFC-2445 format.
2) Convert the government database into VTIMEZONE records for IANA to administer.
Isn't conversion automatic?
Its not automatic until the code is written. Then someone at IANA will keep updateing the information from the government data or from direct input.
If so, why would two databases need to be administered separately? One database should be generated automatically from the other.
Could be. However IANA will acceppt the responsability. Where as it looks to me if the government data is not authoritive. The administration will also include (in time) servers that can serve out VTIMEZONE information real time to calendar tools via CAP (Calendar Access Protocol). draft-ietf-calsch-cap-<version>.txt
And if someone want to volunteer - make a converter to go from VTIMEZONE format to zic input format to keep the databases in sync.
Why would this be necessary, if conversion is automatic?
Point me at something automatic that is doing this.
FYI, here is a brief summary of existing sources for time zone data: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm
And here is a copy of the tz mailing list archive: ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzarchive.gz
I have already looked at those. I could not find anything that supports RFC-2445. -Doug
participants (5)
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Alex LIVINGSTON -
David Keegel -
Doug Royer -
G. Del Merritt -
Paul Eggert