Hoping someone can provide examples or something. Are there cases where people are using their own Timezone data? (I'm thinking like a company or research station or something that doesn't snap to some "normal" tz for some reason) Any examples? For non-standard timezones is there a recommendation for naming conventions? (Eg: etc/mine ?) In several systems it's possible to adjust the Timezone data, and, of course someone could edit and install their own versions of the tzdb data on systems that consume it, but I'm curious if it ever happens in practice? Thanks, Shawn
On 01/04/2013 02:19 PM, Shawn Steele wrote:
Are there cases where people are using their own Timezone data? (I'm thinking like a company or research station or something that doesn't snap to some "normal" tz for some reason)
For a research station, as far as I know common practice is to set the TZ environment variable a la POSIX. So, for example, if the folks in the new Bharathi research station in Antarctica decided on their own time zone, they could set TZ='BHAT-5', say. That way, they don't need to futz with the time zone data. (This is hypothetical -- I expect that they actually just use Indian time, with TZ='Asia/Kolkata').
For non-standard timezones is there a recommendation for naming conventions?
There isn't, but if there's a need we should probably establish one. "Etc" is probably not a good prefix, since it's in use in the standard list. "Extension", maybe?
For non-standard timezones is there a recommendation for naming conventions?
There isn't, but if there's a need we should probably establish one. "Etc" is probably not a good prefix, since it's in use in the standard list. "Extension", maybe?
I was wondering if there was a need :) If nobody's doing it, then there's no need for a user namespace. What made me wonder about this is that I see anecdotal references to how to edit timezone data on various platforms, but no actual examples of people actually using some sort of special time zone. (Except maybe fixing something where they're system hadn't been updated to an updated standard). So the references seem more like "gee, isn't it nifty that you can do this?" rather than "I used this to solve problem XXX." -Shawn
On 01/05/2013 01:30 PM, Shawn Steele wrote:
I see anecdotal references to how to edit timezone data on various platforms, but no actual examples of people actually using some sort of special time zone.
Typically, I think, people use what is coming from the tz database, unchanged. And in the exceptions, they typically edit an existing entry rather than come up with a new name. And in the exceptions to *that*, they typically use a name similar to the names already in the database, rather than an unusual name.
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Shawn Steele