[tz] Timezones Morocco 2013 incorrect

[Tim Thornton]

Erik,
I agree that Ramadan is defined by the crescent of the new moon, but
depending on the branch of Islam in some cases they are happy to use the
predicted values, but in others it has to be observed, which can cause a
difference due to either simple differences in observations or things like
cloud cover. My work in this area was in software for prayer times, where
this difference is taken into account - I don't know if time zones in
countries are happy to use the predictions, or whether some of them use the
observations.
Tim


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-----Original Message-----
From: tz-bounces at iana.org [mailto:tz-bounces at iana.org] On Behalf Of Erik
Homoet
Sent: 04 March 2013 08:53
To: Paul Eggert
Cc: Sascha von Gualtieri; tz at iana.org
Subject: Re: [tz] Timezones Morocco 2013 incorrect

Hi Paul,

Law by the government is the for the long term, not having DST during
Ramadan:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2698707/en
http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/morocco-dst-2012.html
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/africa/morocco/time-morocco/
http://www.worldtimezone.com/dst_news/

An official link for the announcement for this year I cannot find on
official local websites but on all timezone and worldtime websites and
airlines booking engines are using it.

Ramadan is defined by cresent of new moon. The dates for the coming years
can be found on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan_%28calendar_month%29

Best regards,
Erik

  





On 02/03/13 03:20, "Paul Eggert" <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 02/28/13 02:46, Erik Homoet wrote:
> 
>> Morocco is also on Wintertime during the month of Ramadan.
> 
> Thank you for the heads-up.  Can you please point us at a local, 
> reliable source for this news?  Presumably timeanddate.com got it from 
> somewhere.  An English-language source would be preferred, but Arabic 
> is OK.
> 
> The Wikipedia article "Daylight saving time in Morocco"
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_Morocco>
> says "starting in 2012, clocks shall be advanced 60 minutes at
> 02:00 on the last Sunday of April of each year, and return to UTC at 
> 03:00 on the last Sunday of September of the same year, with the 
> exception of the holy month of Ramadan, during which DST will not be 
> observed."  But the sources it cites don't actually seem to say this.
> 
> Which raises the question: how is Ramadan determined in Morocco?
> Is it a government decree long in advance, or is it decided based on 
> visual sightings of the crescent moon?  If the latter, it's going to 
> be hard for us to predict the daylight-saving transitions.
> 


Erik Homoet
Business Consultant
quintessence consulting AMS
mobile: +31 614534022
email: ehomoet at quintessence.net
skype: erik_qc_ams