What's in a name?

[Law, Gwil Jr.]

Eric Ulevik [eau at ozemail.com.au] wrote:

[EU]>From: "Oscar van Vlijmen" <o.van.vlijmen at tip.nl>
[OvV]>> About the naming of the TZ timezone database.

This discussion appears to be searching for a name that will give the
general public an idea of what we're doing.  If, as I believe, the Olson
archive is the most complete and accurate collection of historical time
zone data in the world (possibly excepting the Shanks atlases), there
are a lot of people who should know about it...not just Unix techies.
To the general public, "zoneinfo" is not self-explanatory.  There are
too many types of zone.  I think the name selected should contain either
"timezone", "time zone", or "tz".

[OvV]>> The main issue was: more visible webpresentation.

The host of the "official" site of the tz mailing list should know how
to get ranked high by search engines.

[EU]>For impact, the main web page must be short and to the point.

It should offer a very user-friendly interface to the tzdata archive.
At <http://www1.tip.nl/~t876506/DSTtable.html>, Oscar van Vlijmen's new
page is a good start.  The next step would be to open up the full range
of historical data.

An advantage to having a highly visible Web site is that we would get
more updates and error reports from well-informed laymen.  The webmaster
would have to spend a good deal of time processing those messages.  Who
volunteers to be webmaster?

[EU]>I'd be happy to do some of the editing if someone can host the site.

I infer that you're not willing or able to host it.

I can modestly offer some of my space on Mindspring.  See my page
<http://www.mindspring.com/~gwil/statoids.html> to get an idea of what's
there.  When I say "modestly", I mean that Paul Eggert's existing site
at <http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm> would be a much more logical
choice if Paul wants to take on this responsibility.

I could set aside about four megabytes for time zone info.  As a proof
of my bona fides, I've contributed quite a bit of IATA time zone data
to Paul Eggert since about 1996.  By the way, I've resolved to keep my
Web site as noncommercial as possible.

As I see it, the tz Web site would be edited in the same way as the tz
archive.  A moderator (presumably the webmaster) would try to achieve a
consensus among the contributors, and would then post the results.

Yours,    Gwillim Law