[tz] On ISO country for timezones (Re: Classifying IDs)

Stephen Colebourne scolebourne at joda.org
Fri Oct 8 14:20:31 UTC 2021


On Fri, 8 Oct 2021 at 07:20, Clive D.W. Feather <clive at davros.org> wrote:
> Stephen Colebourne via tz said:
> > On Thu, 7 Oct 2021 at 16:29, Clive D.W. Feather <clive at davros.org> wrote:
> > > I don't see the word "deprecated" anywhere in the theory file. Who is
> > > saying that IDs should be deprecated and what do they mean by that term?
> >
> > When an ID is deprecated, the project is sending a message that users
> > should not use that ID and should use something else instead.
>
> You have completely missed my point.
>
> Where does "the project" talk about deprecating IDs at all? Not in the
> theory file.

There is a frequently expressed view that lots of IDs in tzdb only
exist for backwards compatibility. It is pretty clear that means they
are not considered to be part of the main API of the project.

This has two effects - new IDs will not added when they should be (eg
when Kosovo gets an ISO code) and pre-1970 history gets merged
(because some IDs are considered less important than others).

The first step to resolving the issues tzdb has is to stop treating
non-region location IDs as a historical mistake.

Stephen


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