time zone object

[Paul Eggert]

   Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 11:50:57 -0700 (PDT)
   From: ncm at cantrip.org (Nathan Myers)

   One solution would be a network of TZ servers that can hand out
   up-to-date fragments of the database on demand, similar to DNS
   service....  Probably the IETF should be involved in this last bit ...

Mike Carney of Sun has drafted a proposal along these lines.  See:

  M. W. Carney
  DHCP Option for IEEE 1003.1 POSIX Timezone Specifications
  ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-dhc-timezone-03.txt
  (1997-07-30)

That draft handles only POSIX-style TZ strings.  On July 31 I sent
comments to Carney suggesting that support be added for Olson-style
strings, and he responded favorably.  A copy of those comments is in
<ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzarchive.gz> (look for the string
"<199708010208.TAA09225 at shade.twinsun.com>").

However, neither Carney's draft nor my comments addressed the problem
of incremental update of time zone rules.  I'll forward a brief
summary of your suggestion to Carney; please feel free to get further
involved as well.