Pacific-New

[Bill Unruh]

On Sun, 22 Feb 2009, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:

> The "pacificnew" file includes information about legislation that was
> introduced (but not passed) in the United States Congress; it serves to
> explain why a "Pacific-New" time zone was created in the first place.
> Note that the last line of the file is a "Link America/Los_Angeles
> US/Pacific-New" line, meaning that using either name now has the same
> effect.

I guess I object strongly to including legislative proposals into the tzdata
files. If we introduce a new file and a new timezone everytime some government
official makes some silly comment about time, the whole edifice will collapse
under the weight of that garbage. While the tzdata file is not an official
publication it is regarded as pretty authoritiative by most people using
computers in the world. It should therefore strive to be accurate and
authoritative, and not get bogged down with irrelevancies, and political
commentary or jokes (which is the only thing I can imagine that the
Pacific-New timezone  to be).

>
> As to jokes and idiocy: there used to be an obscure bit of word play in
> an strftime.c comment;
> it was eliminated in version 7.40.-)

Never saw it. I am not above jokes and wordplay but not when it extends to
introducing new time zones in at least semi-authoritative publications. 
Are we going to get an Okeefenokie time zone because someone likes Pogo-- or a
US/BUSH timezone (constantly set to midnight) as political commentary on the
last president? That an ill-considered proposal popped up in Congress 20 years
ago  but was never passed should not be memorialised by a new time zone in tzdata.

My response was triggered when a Suse user said his distro assigned
Pacific-New to him. Having never seen it before (Mandriva wisely does not have it), 
I looked at the tzdata file and found it. Please please remove it.

>
>        --ado
>

-- 
William G. Unruh   |  Canadian Institute for|     Tel: +1(604)822-3273
Physics&Astronomy  |     Advanced Research  |     Fax: +1(604)822-5324
UBC, Vancouver,BC  |   Program in Cosmology |     unruh at physics.ubc.ca
Canada V6T 1Z1     |      and Gravity       |  www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/