[tz] [PROPOSED] Avoid backward links in zone.tab
Michael H Deckers
michael.h.deckers at googlemail.com
Tue May 11 12:32:58 UTC 2021
On 2021-05-10 18:04, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Perhaps someone could add systematically-formatted comments to
> 'backzone' giving geographical coordinates for names like Asia/Hanoi
> that are not already mentioned in 'zone1970.tab'.
Yes, I understand.
Just to make sure: my point is not a question only for backzone
data. What happens with the proposed change is that
any location name of a timezone in the mainline tzdb data can
no longer be (easily) connected with geographical coordinates as
soon as the location name (is a link and) also occurs in
the backzone file.
Rather, the corresponding geographic coordinates in zone.tab
are no longer connected with the timezone name, only with
an ISO country code. The same holds for several proposed lines
in zone1070.tab such as
AQ,KW,SA,YE +2438+04643 Etc/GMT-3 Arabia, Syowa
What are these geographical coordinates supposed to indicate?
Of course, there is no error (all the advertised functions of tzdb
will continue to work, except perhaps choosing Syowa with tzselect)
-- it is only my failure to understand the conceptual schema
of the tzdb data. One of the successful design choices of the tzdb
database was to identify timezones by locations (rather than
by areas or countries), so that location names and location
coordinates are equivalent means of identifying timezones
of locations. Is this still true?
Michael Deckers.
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