Proposed 64-bit changes

Robert Elz kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Tue May 3 23:34:22 UTC 2005


    Date:        Tue, 3 May 2005 12:52:41 -0700 (PDT)
    From:        Robbin Kawabata <Robbin.Kawabata at eng.sun.com>
    Message-ID:  <200505031954.j43Jsbf2194439 at jurassic.eng.sun.com>

  | As a side note, our standards representative comments that POSIX TZ rules
  | have been extended in recent years to be more flexible than they had been
  | in the past, and would likely be extended again if uspres, even, odd,
  | or other rules are actually put into practice.

The even/odd rule was in real use for several years in South Australia,
not all that long ago - when summer time was extended to cover the period
of the Adelaide festival (and the Grand Prix, when that was in Adelaide).

The end date was eventually moved to cover the period of the extension, so
it isn't needed any more - but all kinds of weirs things happen.   A "rule in
a line" approach can't possibly cover it all properly.   And that's even if 
putting system type information into environment variables (as distinct
from user overrides of system information) wasn't fundamentally the wrong
approach anyway.

kre




More information about the tz mailing list