Chamorro Standard Time (new US time zone)

INFOMAN Inc. mpereira at istar.ca
Tue Jan 9 15:29:04 UTC 2001


Paul,

I notice that Congressman Underwood is suggesting "ChST" as the human
interface label for this new time zone. Are there any rules for the use of
uppercase/lower case Latin-1 characters for labels for time zones? You state
that POSIX allows for this. However, I would suggest that, we continue to
use upper case only.
Otherwise what is to prevent one source from using "ChST" and another source
using "CHST"?

Further by allowing lower case, one makes it easier to introduce the use of
diacritics (e.g.  é,ö,ñ, etc.

IATA which assigns codes for pick-up and delivery points for airlines,
a.k.a. commonly known as airport decided long time ago to use upper case A-Z
based codes only.

The reason I am raising these issues is because of the standardization work
that I am doing in the area of Open-edi and modelling of components of
business transaction as re-useable objects., i.e. work of SC32/WG1 (now
commonly known a e-commerce, e-business, e-government, etc.) Let me give you
an example, a buyer  places a request for proposal( RFP)or a request for bid
(RFB), states that one can submit them  via paper & courier, via fax, vie
e-mail and attachment, etc. but that all bids must be received by the bid
receiving office at the locations/addresses specified  "prior to 17:00 CST".
Consequently, we need to be able to reference, unambiguously, the set of
official time zones internationally as well as within a particular
jurisdiction (e.g. USA).

In this context my initial questions are:

1. Is there an "official list" of all the names or labels used to designated
time zones
2. And their mapping to "+" or "-"  offsets of Greenwich mean time?
3. If so, is this a referencable coded value domain?

I will stop here and await your response.
If anyone want to talk to me, you can reach me at +1-613-234-3244.
Regards - Jake Knoppers

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert at twinsun.com]
> Sent: January 8, 2001 6:51 PM
> To: rmcdow at enteles.com
> Cc: tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov
> Subject: Re: Chamorro Standard Time (new US time zone)
>
>
> > Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 23:33:41 -0800
> > From: Rives McDow <rmcdow at enteles.com>
>
> > Congress just added Guam and the Northern Marianas to the
> Uniform Time Act
> > and is calling the time zone, "Chomorro standard time"  (This is spelled
> > differently in various sources, and I'm not sure of the final correct
> > spelling.)
>
> Thanks for the heads-up.  The Congressional Delegate from Guam,
> Congressman Robert A. Underwood, issued a press release
> <http://www.house.gov/underwood/news-releases/00/1227000.html>
> (2000-12-27) saying:
>
> * President Clinton signed it into law on 2000-12-23.
> * It's called "Chamorro Standard Time".
> * The Congressman will seek the use of "ChST" for Chamorro Standard Time,
>   as "CST" is taken.
>
> thomas.loc.gov says that H.R. 3756 became Public Law Number 106-564 on
> that day.  The Government Printing Office does not yet have that law
> available, but H.R. 3756 did not specify an effective date, so I
> assume that the change was effective when it was signed into law, and
> unless we get better info I'll include it that way in my next proposed
> patch.
>
> I'm pretty sure that "Chamorro" is right -- at any rate, that's the
> official name of the zone in H.R. 3756, regardless of how other people
> might spell the word.
>
> This will be the first time zone abbreviation in our database that has
> a lower-case letter.  POSIX allows this, so I guess it's OK.
>
>
>
>




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