FW: Typos, duplicates, old/new names

Naoko McCracken info at nao-net.com
Fri Jun 12 04:12:58 UTC 2009


Scott,

Thank you for your in-depth explanation of why the names are set up this way.
It sounds like a lot more complicated set of information than I realized before.
I have much appreciation for you all to be keeping the database available for
other projects.

Now that I understand the reasons,  it makes sense.

This new type of timezone system was introduced in the current version of the
program. It used to have a simple timezone selection with +- GMT; summer
time was set manually.

I'm not a programmer but more of a translator, so I'll work with others to
figure out what we can do.
Thank you so much for your help.

Naoko McCracken

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Scott Atwood<scott.roy.atwood at gmail.com> wrote:
> Naoko,
>
> The timezone identifiers used by the Olson timezone database aren't
> necessarily intended for direct use by end users.  Many of the issues you
> report are due to the rules and conventions used for selecting timezone
> identifier names.
>
> The basic structure of the timezone identifiers is usually in two parts.
> The first part identifies the continent or ocean in which the timezone is
> located.  The second part is the name of the largest or most important city
> within the timezone.  North America and South America are collapsed into a
> single top level identifier of America.  This structure was chosen because
> continents and cities tend to be relatively stable entities, but country
> names and their borders can vary wildly over time.
>
> Indiana, Kentucky, and Argentina have particularly interesting time zone
> histories, which means they contain relatively many timezones identified by
> relatively nondescript cities.  So in order to avoid ambiguity and/or
> conflict in timezone identifiers, an additional level in the timezone
> hierarchy was introduced for these regions.
>
> Most of the issues you identify are related to backwards compatibility
> links.  Once a timezone identifier has been created, it should remain stable
> so that software that relies on an existing timezone identifier won't break
> when the timezone package is updated.  So if a timezone identifier needs to
> change, the old timezone identifier is kept as an alias for the new name.
>
> Most of the duplicates you note are due to changes in the preferred English
> transliteration of foreign city names.  The abbreviations of Australian
> timezones and the cardinal direction Australian timezones are deprecated
> timezone identifiers that are backwards compatibility links to timezones in
> the current Continent/City format.  When a city name changes, the old name
> is kept as an alias for the new name.  ComodRivadavia is also a backwards
> compatibility link.
>
> Unless these backwards compatibility links are causing serious issues with
> your application, I urge you to leave them be, since they be required by
> some clients who already rely on them.  However, it may not be unreasonable
> to not display the backwards compatibility links in a UI that end users use
> to select a new time zone.
>
> The timezone identifiers can only contain upper and lower case ASCII
> letters, and underscores.  Spaces, apostrophes, and accented letters are not
> allowed.  Hence Dumont d'Urville becomes DumontDUrville.
>
> And for what it's worth, there is a Central Western time zone in Australia,
> but it is unofficial, and though it covers a large area, it encompasses only
> a very small population.
>
> I hope this answers your concerns.  Please let me know if you have any
> further questions.
>
> -Scott
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 6:16 AM, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]
> <olsona at dc37a.nci.nih.gov> wrote:
>>
>> I'm forwarding this message from Naoko McCracken, who is not on the time
>> zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the list, please direct
>> replies appropriately.
>>
>>                                --ado
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Naoko McCracken [mailto:info at nao-net.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:01
>> To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
>> Subject: Typos, duplicates, old/new names
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was directed to your project when I reported issues with WordPress
>> language file.
>> They use your timezone database via the php function
>> timezone_identifiers_list() to fetch country names for:
>> http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-i18n/pot/trunk/wordpress-continents-
>> cities.pot
>>
>> My post:
>> http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-polyglots/2009-May/003435.html
>> Reply:
>> http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-polyglots/2009-May/003439.html
>>
>> There are a couple more things reported by another language file
>> maintainer:
>> http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-polyglots/2009-May/003443.html
>>
>> I'm totally new here and not sure if I'm sending this to the right
>> place.
>> I'd appreciate it if someone can help me through to get these issues
>> straightened.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> ---
>> Naoko McCracken
>> http://ja.wordpress.org/
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Scott Atwood
>
> Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.  ~H.G. Wells
>
>
>




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