Eric Muller wrote: "To my knowledge, there is not yet a publicly available shapefile that covers all the tz timezones, but there are shapefiles that cover "modern" time zones." World Time Explorer (a Windows program that I made) includes a shapefile that is including all tz timezones. Additionally, it contains a DBF file for the shapefile that both represents the names of the shapes, but also connects each shape to WTE's own timezones. Note that often a given timezone spans many little pieces since the land surface is split into many islands. The only problem of mapping the tz timezones to the WTE timezones is just the naming convention, for instance the tz timezone Europe/Uzhgorod is in WTE "Ukraine, Uzhgorod". In most cases this should be straightforward, but some might need a little bit of "digging". Timezones are present in the city.txt file with an "@" in front, and represents the subsequent cities not having an "@" in front. You can use WTE to calculate the map colors for any given time since 1850 till today, where each color represents a given GMT offset. There is an example of how this looks like here: HYPERLINK "http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/WorldMapBig.gif"http://www.worldtimeexplor er.com/WorldMapBig.gif but also note that calculating the colors is only activated when you have a full (paid) license. On the other hand I consider the shapefile to be publicly available, although I have not supplied it with a proper GNU free license or similar license. P.S: I use "timezone" instead of "time zone" deliberately, although I perhaps agree that "time zone" is better English grammar. One reason is that the Danish language would always put together the words to a single word with a new independent meaning, in Danish "time zone" is "tidszone". But also it is clear that a Google search for "time zone" gives a whole lot of hits for articles referring to time and another pile of hits referring to zone, which really have nothing to do with "time zone". Just my 2 cents. Regards, - Jesper Nørgaard Welen Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard@Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (55) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (55) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the shareware program World Time Explorer, I made: HYPERLINK "http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/index.html"http://www.worldtimeexplorer.co m/index.html No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.6.21/1667 - Release Date: 2008-09-11 18:55