Time zone suggestions for draft-ietf-calsch-ical-08.txt

Keith Moore moore at cs.utk.edu
Thu Aug 6 00:57:06 UTC 1998


> * A more consistent naming strategy for TZIDs.  The current draft is
>   inconsistent: for the same time zone it sometimes says
>   "America-New_York", sometimes "America-New York", and sometimes
>   other things like "Eastern".  TZIDs are arbitrary, but a good naming
>   convention can help reduce the number of errors, ease maintenance,
>   and improve interoperability.

What I'd really like to see is a separate document defining
globally-scoped timezone names.  That way, TZIDs don't have to be
arbitrary.  I would think that such a document would want to use a
subset of the names in the Olsen database.  e.g. "/US/Eastern"

> * A reference to the Olson database prior art.  Many potential
>   implementers don't know about this useful source, and have thereby
>   propagated incorrect time zone data.

I agree that this would be useful.

> * Allow UTC offsets that are not multiples of one minute.  This is
>   needed for historically recent applications (e.g. the time zone in
>   Liberia up to 1972).
>
> * The examples should be a tad more careful about distinguishing
>   between US Eastern time and New York time, since there was a lot of
>   confusion about the Eastern time zone before, say, 1976.

These also seem appropriate.

Keith





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