[tz] Before 1970 - proposal to change LMT

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Mon Aug 11 14:58:40 UTC 2014


Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> All values for the far past are misleading to some degree, "more
> misleading" is subjective.

Sure, but all the same it would be weird for a user who does not know 
that LMT means "approximate placeholder" to see a transition like this:

Zone	Europe/Paris	0:15:00 -	LMT	1891 Mar 15  0:01
			0:09:21	-	PMT	1911 Mar 11  0:01

for France's institution of a standard time zone in 1891.  That would 
appear to be a transition from a GMT-based time zone to a 
let's-thumb-our-nose-at-the-British time zone, which is not at all what 
happened.  In contrast, the (non)-transition that's currently in the 
database feels closer to what actually happened.

Yes, this is subjective, but the proposed change feels considerably more 
artificial and forced than what we've got.


More information about the tz mailing list