TZ web page: not effortless

[Oscar van Vlijmen]

Following the thought given by Paul Eggert (Feb. 10):
"But is it worth our time to do, given that we'd be duplicating other
people's efforts?"

I would like to add:

Looking around, for instance at:

http://sandbox.xerox.com/stewart/tzconvert.cgi - update: tzdata1999e
http://www.timezoneconverter.com/ - update: Oct. 13 1999
http://www.burbs.com/fcgi-bin/tzconvert.fcgi - update: Nov. 15 1998
http://www.bsdi.com/date - update: periodically; seems reasonably up to
date but still not tzdata2000a
http://www.hilink.com.au/times/ - update: unknown; seems not very up to
date (e.g. Tonga)
http://www.timeanddate.com/ - update: tzdata2000a ?

it can be noticed that it appears very difficult to maintain an up to date
timezone converter.
At the moment Steffen Thorsen of timeanddate.com spends between 5 and 10
hours weekly maintaining and evolving his site, which is in existence since
1995 (source: http://www.timeanddate.com/steffen/).
Very impressive, but for how long from now? Keep in mind that the Olson
effort (tzcode & tzdata) exists since 1986.

If someone can guarantee that he or she can find the time, energy and
resources to maintain for many years an up to date TZ web application, then
go ahead.
If possible, as Gwillim Law noted Feb. 8, including all historical data.
If it cannot be guaranteed that with each tzdata update the web application
gets updated too, it could be wise to forget this idea.
Don't even bother to produce long lists of time-related (and
calendar-related) web links; there are many more and some very good ones at
the moment, and it takes a lot of time to keep those lists up to date.

My general idea is: without long-term updating guarantees: just stay with a
passive web page, promoting the merits of tzcode & tzdata and the "private
investigation" services.
For the moment, an extra impact should be gained from submitting
tz-link.htm to search engines and keepers of lists with time/calendar info.


Oscar van Vlijmen
2000-02-11