[tz] On merging timezones - a radical proposal.

[Tim Parenti]

On 22 May 2013 20:16, Robert Elz <kre at munnari.oz.au> wrote:

> random832 at fastmail.us said:
> | Since you can't define zones in terms of other zones, we don't even make
> it
> | easy for them to handle themselves.
>
> You could also write an application (probably even just a script) that
> would
> do it that way as well - extracting parts of other zones and combining
> them together to make a new zone specification.   Again, feel free.


Why *don't* we support defining zones in terms of other zones?  I presume
someone has brought up the suggestion in the past.

I can certainly see both sides of that argument.  We have several comments
with "like America/New_York" etc. throughout the data which could simply be
replaced with actual syntax to the same effect.  This would cause zones to
be linked, but only within the limited scope of certain temporal boundaries
(with "max" being a valid boundary, of course).  The obvious upside would
be that there's only one place to change rules if they're modified later as
a group.  The obvious downside is that when rules change for only part of a
group, it's more work to track all of the data down.  We'd also want to be
careful to limit chaining and especially avoid recursion.

Has there been a discussion on this before, and if so, can anyone who was
around at the time recall its conclusions?

--
Tim Parenti
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