[tz] Correcting daylight-savings time for central Missouri prior to 1967

[Guy Harris]

On Nov 23, 2018, at 3:56 PM, Phake Nick <c933103 at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Even now, locally in upstate NY, the Amish are present and form a significant part of the population.  They never observe DST and are on standard time year around.  Most of them have sworn off any form of electricity aynway.  Situations like this are quite common in time change history.
> Would it warrant the creation of an additional tz region for them?

Which time zones and DST rules, other than those specified by a governmental body or similar organization, should the tz data base handle?

I could imagine that, in a territory that has more than one body exercising the functions of a government, and in which the two bodies specify a different time zone offset or different DST rules, we might support both (and there might be examples of that).

Heck, at least as I read the "asia" file, there's *one* body exercising the functions of a government in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and they recognize both standard PRC time and Xinjiang time.

However, I'm not sure that a particular group choosing not to follow DST, *and* also largely choosing not to use computers, would be helped very much by getting their own tzdb region, and people who communicate with them would probably not be helped much, either, as they're probably already pretty much used to shifting time when saying "meet me in town at 2 PM" to members of that group, i.e. if DST is in effect, if you want to meet them when *your* watch says 2 PM, you tell them "meet me in town at 1 PM" (unless members of group do the translation).

At least one page, http://amishamerica.com/do-the-amish-use-computers-and-the-internet/, suggests that some Amish use cell phones.  I'm not sure whether they'd want it to display their time or their non-Amish neighbors' time - if they use the cell phone largely to deal with non-Amish people, displaying non-Amish time might be preferred.  (I'm guessing they prefer feature phones to smartphones.)