From: Stefan Johansson [SMTP:jason@stefan-johansson.com] Sent: Monday, November 01, 1999 7:41 PM Yes, 1999h reflects the right DST start and stop dates for Brazil, but decree 3188 of 1999-09-30 included the states of SE, AL, PE, PB, RN, CE, PI, MA and RR, further to those already mentioned in decree 3150 of 1999-08-23. Please make the necessary changes in the Brazilian rules, since I am not familiar with the syntax. It should be OK; those changes were installed soon after Decree 3,188 came out. As a consequence, I would like to suggest the following Brazilian time zones: I think the only difference between your suggestions and what's currently in the tz database is the choice of the canonical representative for each region. The TZ database uses Sao Paulo where you suggest Brasilia; Sao Paulo seems correct to me, since Sao Paulo is larger. For Tocantins, though, the TZ database uses Araguaina instead of Palmas. Here I'm not so sure which is right, since I don't know which city is larger, and I don't know how distinctive a name `Palmas' is.

From: "Stefan Johansson" <jason@stefan-johansson.com> Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 22:18:46 -0200 1) As can be seen from the screen shot attached, taken only 6 minutes ago, Brazil has NOT been updated according to Decree 3188, Oops. Thanks for pointing this out. I thought that I forwarded a fix for that to the tz list, but now I see that I forgot to. Sorry about that. I will send a patch to the tz mailing list as soon as I can. There are several other changes that I'd been meaning to send (only one having any priority -- the Micronesian island of Kosrae is off by an hour in the current database) and I'll include them too. everyone in Brazil knows that the official time in Brazil is called "Horário de Brasília", i.e. Brasília time. I think that justifies changing the zone name to Brasília. I worry that this would lead to confusion. America/Sao_Paulo covers only Bahia, Goias, Distrito Federal, Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. But "Horário de Brasília" also currently refers to Maranhao, Piaui, Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, Pernambuco (except Fernando de Noronha), Tocantins, Alagoas, Sergipe, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul; and (ignoring the DST difference) also Amapa and east Para. In other words, the phrase "Horário de Brasília" is as ambiguous as the phrase "US Eastern Time"; it's not clear whether DST should be observed (as in New York and Sao Paulo) or not (as in Indianapolis and Belem), and it's not clear which DST history should be observed. I'd rather avoid the ambiguity if possible. 3) Palmas is the capital of Tocantins. It has 86,000 inhabitants. Araguaina is bigger right now, with 106,000 habitants, however Palmas is the city that is growing and soon will be the biggest city in the state of TO. OK, I suppose we'll have to change at some point then (but not now -- I don't want to offend the Araguaianans :-).