[tz] So, about those LMT offsets

Tom Lane tgl at sss.pgh.pa.us
Sun May 23 04:59:52 UTC 2021


Steve Allen via tz <tz at iana.org> writes:
> On Sun 2021-05-23T10:54:16+0800 Philip Paeps via tz hath writ:
>> This is a good point.  Particularly since LMT is only "correct" for very
>> narrow regions within any given timezone.

> In general LMT is not even correct for the city at the given location.

Yeah, this.  The entire premise of tzdb's zones is that the same time
is/was observed over the whole area of the zone.  Even granting that
the time in New York City back in 1883 was exactly GMT-4:56:02, surely
that's complete fiction for most of the zone?  We're not helping anybody
by specifying many digits of fictional precision.

Having said that, I do buy John Hawkinson's point that fooling
around with tzdb's data for past timestamps is a bad idea.  But
that should apply equally to Paul's proposal to drop the existing
data for times later than the LMT era.

			regards, tom lane


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