[tz] Pre-1970 data

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Brian Park via tz said:
>    Can you explain why? Because it will cause arguments about disputed
>    places? I think only a small minority of places around the world are
>    disputed.

But they're the ones that create all the noise.

>    By separating these ISO-country timezones into a
>    'countryzone' file, perhaps we can confine the debate into a smaller
>    section of the TZDB. We could create duplicate entries (i.e.
>    Country1/City, Country2/City), or create a pseudo-country called
>    "Disputed" (i.e. Disputed/City). The point is, we can create policies
>    that govern these disputed regions.

How do you handle the meta-issue that it's disputed whether some of these
issues are even disputed? The government in Beijing will tell you that
there is no dispute about Taiwan: it's part of China. Other people will
tell you that there is a dispute. Similarly for Crimea. And I'm sure many
others. I can already imagine all the complaints that something "obvious"
is being falsely labelled as disputed. Equally, someone can raise a dispute
about almost anything: which disputes are you going to tag as disputed?

>    Could we move 'countryzone' into a separate project?

Of course you could.

As a simple starting point, you could try creating the list you want
*ignoring the pre-1970 data issue* and see how it maps to TZDB.

>    Virtual no one in the world thinks of "America" as referring to all of
>    "North America" and "South America".

Have you asked them all?

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather          | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org     | it will get its revenge.
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