[tz] [PATCH] Revert recent pre-1970 changes.

Lester Caine lester at lsces.co.uk
Mon Sep 2 10:19:23 UTC 2013


Guy Harris wrote:
>> Since the ISO-3166-1 code table is a reasonably well used base for most
>> geographical activity, at some point timezones are required to match each.
>
> There is no necessarily a single tzdb zone for a given entity that has an ISO
> 3166 code.  (Two immediately obvious counterexamples - the entities with the
> ISO 3166 codes "US" and "CA".)
>
> So do you mean that there do not exist - or, at least,*should*  not exist -
> any tzdb zones that apply to more than one entity with a given ISO 3166
> code?

Ignoring the politics ... We need to find out from our users what time zone they
are in. Asking them 'which continent' is one of those things that gets a blank
look at times, so even 'Europe' 'London' CAN be confusing to some users. Ask
them 'country' and you have a much better chance of getting a response, so CA or
US at least get us to a subset of options to select from? I have no problem if
the detail is stored under one 'tag' so that both CA and US could use the same 
raw data, so 'links' to a valid set of tags should work, except would a Canadian 
know the correct US city? Move to the Far East, and translations become 
essential and there may be a need for additional 'links'?

I'll be honest - I'm not particularly bothered either way - but building a 
database of tz links from the full country table ( the free ones rather than the 
3166-2 chargeable ones ;) ) is just another commonly required set of data? If tz 
makes changes, then the cross reference also needs an update.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-----------------------------
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk



More information about the tz mailing list