[tz] New zone for DE, split from Europe/Berlin

Zefram zefram at fysh.org
Sat Mar 3 17:57:14 UTC 2012


Arthur David Olson wrote:
>Here's one possible way to reflect Busingen, Germany following Zurich
>rather than Berlin in 1980.
[comments on the zone.tab lines for Berlin and Zurich]

It contradicts the rule, stated at the top of zone.tab, that the
comment field is "present if and only if the country has multiple rows".
(And yes, my repackager will detect a breach of that rule and kick it
up for human attention.)

>Another possibility would be to add a...
>    DE    +474149+084125    Europe/Busingen
>...line to "zone.tab" and a...
>    Link Europe/Zurich Europe/Busingen
>...line in "europe"

I like this better.  It accurately reflects (in zone.tab) that Busingen
is actually part of DE, which it *should* reflect if you're going to
treat it as a special case at all.  By the way, you need another "0"
on the front of that longitude.

>The Link could be avoided by adding a...
>    DE    +474149+084125    Europe/Zurich    Busingen
>...line to "zone.tab" but that might confuse some readers

This appears to claim that Zurich is part of DE, which is not correct,
and that it's located at the coordinates of Busingen, also not correct.

>(and could break anything out in the wild that relies on the third fields
>of "zone.tab" lines to be unique, as is true now).

The partitioning of the list into countries would seem to imply that a
zone name (city) should appear under only one country.  I think you'd need
a city to actually straddle a border or have changed hands, or something
similar, to justify double appearance.  Zurich doesn't qualify for that,
but Busingen might.

-zefram


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