[tz] Proposed reversions, for moving forward

[Paul Eggert]

Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> I note that the data for Africa/Timbuktu remains changed, and is not
> mentioned in NEWS.

Thanks, fixed with the attached patch.

>>> - Africa/Accra gains DST between 1920 and 1935
>
> Based on your explanation, this looks like a good change with a good
> justification. Can any more detail be added to NEWS?

NEWS contains one line about this, which should be enough for a 
heads-up.  Details can be found in the comments in 'africa'.

> your explanation does not indicate that replacement is right

Of course it's not 100% right.  We don't have reliable information about 
old timestamps in Ghana.  It would be better if we didn't have to put 
this low-quality data into the tz database at all.  The only reason it's 
there is that the format requires it.

Much of the pre-1970 data falls into this category, unfortunately.  When 
the quality is this bad, there's nothing wrong with improving the 
quality even if the result is not perfect, or with removing bad data if 
this can be done without significantly affecting end-user applications.
-------------- next part --------------
From 4fa17743a291fd569c3dd1aee9f9a74d76271365 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2014 18:32:57 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] * NEWS: Also mention Africa/Timbuktu.  (Thanks to Stephen
 Colebourne.)

---
 NEWS | 3 ++-
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 4997cf7..76b0683 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -71,7 +71,8 @@ Unreleased, experimental changes
     Africa.  The affected zones are: Africa/Bamako, Africa/Banjul,
     Africa/Conakry, Africa/Dakar, Africa/Freetown, Africa/Lome,
     Africa/Nouakchott, Africa/Ouagadougou, Africa/Sao_Tome, and
-    Atlantic/St_Helena.  (Thanks to Alan Barrett, Stephen Colebourne,
+    Atlantic/St_Helena.  This also affects the backwards-compatibility
+    link Africa/Timbuktu.  (Thanks to Alan Barrett, Stephen Colebourne,
     Tim Parenti, and David Patte for reporting problems in earlier
     versions of this change.)
 
-- 
1.9.1