Capitals

[Oscar van Vlijmen]

> Garrett Wollman:
> Many time-zone regions do not have a `capital' of any sort.  To give
> just one example, the time zone `America/Los_Angeles' has three
> `capitals': Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia.  None of these are obvious
> choices.  `America/Chicago' has even more possibilities.

Dunno, the book "The world almanac and book of facts", World Almanac Books,
1998, gives on page 542 a list of US state capitals with Sacramento as the
only capital of California, Springfield (not Chicago) as capital of
Illinois, etcetera. Good maps will also show the one and only capital of
states.
For US states with 2 or more timezones, one could use the most populous
county seats or courthouses. For instance, Indiana has 92 counties to choose
from (ibid, page 424).
The same information can be found (elsewhere) for Canada.

But I think it's a bit futile to rework the whole tz database only for the
sake of being administratively correct. Here and there a couple of obvious
corrections won't hurt. But one may have a different opinion.

Oscar van Vlijmen
2000-09-28