Web service time computer

[Deborah Goldsmith]

On Feb 24, 2006, at 1:35 AM, Markus Kuhn wrote:
>> It might be better to maintain TZDATA in xml and have a translator  
>> back
>> to the current format.
>
> And the advantage would be what exactly?

Stability, so that tools that parse the data can deal with change  
more gracefully. The ICU project has had a difficult time keeping up  
with changes to the file and tools. We can't use the output files --  
which *are* stable -- because they do not contain all the data from  
the input that ICU needs.

However, I don't care whether the "master" copy is XML or not, just  
that it is possible to generate XML (or some other stable format)  
from the "official" version of zic, so that when the timezone file  
format changes, or zic changes, the stable format doesn't change.

Deborah Goldsmith
Internationalization, Unicode Liaison
Apple Computer, Inc.
goldsmit at apple.com