[tz] Comments and mapping of tz zones to the real world

[Tobias Conradi]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 12:16 AM, Robert Elz <kre at munnari.oz.au> wrote:
>    Date:        Sun, 6 May 2012 08:03:22 +0200
>    From:        Tobias Conradi <tobias.conradi at gmail.com>
>    Message-ID:  <CAAGevbUnWXeYuQzE-_6AoUsa+c4S7NX2SOWQ57q-t7B55Gom6A at mail.gmail.com>
>
>  | Of course they do. If one selects timezone Asia/Baku based on a
>  | comment that this is the tz zone for Chicago then one would get false
>  | offsets and false transitions.
>
> No, they wouldn't, they'd get perfectly good translations
Thranslation? What translations?
>for Asia/Baku
> which is what they asked for (if those translations were incorrect, that
> would be a bug).
Which translations, what are you talking about?

>  That they didn't get what they hoped for is their
> (or someone else's) problem, not ours, as deciding what timezone people
> should use is just outside the scope of this project.
If the tzdb comments say zone A/B is the zone for location C, then
Robert Elz comes and says it is not "our" (who is we? Robert Elz and
his friends?) problem, then I think Robert Elz is right. But the
problem that the tzdb users have is caused by a false information.

You, can say no, but it is. And false information, that causes users
to have false offsets, is a bug. Because the scope of the tz project
is .... Oh I think I quoted it already. Maybe this time you look into
the Theory file and read what the scope of the tzdb is.

> Somewhere there just have to be boundaries on what we do,
Who is we?

>and this is one
> of them that's always been there.
???

>  | Can you tell a way of how a user determines the correct zone for a
>  | random location in Indiana,
>
> No, no idea, not my problem.
Fine, I wasn't claiming it would be the problem of Robert Elz. But it
was Robert Elz who claimed

" the comments in the zone file
... have no real importance"

> Sure, there are people who look at this stuff, but not very many
> compared with the number of people who use the real product of this
> project - which is the zone database.


>   The general process is that they select
> whichever of those towns (or locations) has (and has had) clocks showing
> the same time as their local clock,
Haha. Why then do they need the tzdb, if they know the time already?
Why is the tzdb having the 1970 cutoff point? What you say is false if
one checks Theory file.

>and use that one - if they are local,
> they probably will simply know that.   For outsiders who have some reason
> to need to know Indiana time translations they would need to be told which
> timezone applies (or depending upon the application, the actual offset that
> applies to a particular timestamp).
For Robert Elz's tzdb users would need to be told, since Robert Elz in
his database doesn't care about false information.

This does not apply to what the IANA hosted tzdb project does. Do you
have a mailing list for your tzdb project?

Also it seems the Elz tzdb is much less known than the IANA / Olson tzdb.

> If the user in question happened to be me, I can assure you, giving lists
> of county names wouldn't help in the slightest.
I don't care about that.

> Note I am not saying that the problem you're posing isn't a real problem,
> nor that it shouldn't have work done on it.   It is just that it is not
> our problem.
Who is we?

> The world has zillions of problems that we don't pretend to
> be attempting to solve,
Who is we?

> some of those are even related to time, and/or
> timezones - our job
Who is we?
> is limited to just making sure that we have
Who is we?

> all the
> zones that are needed (so there is a correct answer for that user to
> select an appropriate zone for their random Indiana location).
But the user can find a false answer if comments are false.

>   Beyond
> that, someone else can work on it
> (perhaps with overlap from members of
> this list.)
On what?

-- 
Tobias Conradi
Rheinsberger Str. 18
10115 Berlin
Germany

http://tobiasconradi.com/