From: Chuck Ellis [mailto:cellis@gaz.com] Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 5:45 PM

I am willing to devote some more time to trying to create the fundamental tz map that is needed for the generalized application that Arthur is discussing, but it is too much for one person alone

It would very nice to have such a map and I'm happy to hear of progress being made in this area. Sorry, I haven't had time to think about it much, though. Do you know of the existing free databases in this area? They might help you get started (or, if they're low quality, I suppose they might slow you down). Here are the databases I know about; I've added links to them in my latest proposed patch to tz-link.htm. * Manifold.net's Free Maps and GIS Data includes a Manifold-format map of world time zone boundaries distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). <http://www.manifold.net/download/freemaps.html> * The GeoCommunity's International Time Zones publishes the same data in other formats. <http://software.geocomm.com/data/intl_timezones.html> * The US Geological Survey's National Atlas of the United States publishes the Time Zones of the United States in the public domain. <http://www.nationalatlas.gov/timeznm.html> * The GeoCommunity lists several commercial sources for International Time Zones and Time Zone Data. Obviously they can't be copied, but they might be useful for spot checks. <http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/features/timezones/>