format of tz database

[Paul Eggert]

   From: "Chris Sells" <csells at sellsbrothers.com>
   Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 15:06:21 -0700

   XML would allow the data to be used without the software, making it
   instantly available for all the platforms not supported today

Yes, they could read the XML data, but these platforms can read the
text data now.  Merely XMLizing the data won't make it much more
available for time calculations, which is the goal here.

A more appropriate new format would be MIME text/calendar, which
specifies a VTIMEZONE calendar component.  Please see:

http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsch-charter.html

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt
(section 4.6.5)

Doug Royer wrote in February that he was working on a project to
convert the tz database to VTIMEZONE format, and I believe he's still
working on it.  As I understand it he also advocated that IANA be in
charge of the tz database, but I don't know what's come of that part
of his proposal.

   > From: Eric Ulevik [mailto:eau at ozemail.com.au]
   > * right now, there are no good editors for creating XML

   Not true. Win32 has about half a dozen good ones.

I don't use Win32, and I don't know of any free, portable XML editor
(unless you count Emacs :-).