user-friendly time zone list

[Douglass Davis]

Yoshito,


The timezone meta zones are exactly the concept I was looking for.  I am 
currently trying to synthesize that data along with the data in the 
zone.tab file to come up with a good list. Only problem now is, my 
version of Oracle is missing a lot of time zones, but I will try to do 
what I can. Thanks for the help.

-d



yoshito_umaoka at us.ibm.com wrote:
> Unicode CLDR project is trying to provide "common name" and its 
> translations.
>
> http://cldr.unicode.org/
>
> CLDR introduced a concept - meta zone.  For exmaple, poeple in the US 
> recognize New York and Detroit are in a same zone "Eastern Time" or "ET". 
> So CLDR defines a "meta" zone called "America_Eastern" and several 
> US/Canada zones are mapped to this metazone.  Below is the part of data 
> maintained by CLDR project -
>
> <timezone type="America/New_York">
>         <usesMetazone mzone="America_Eastern"/>
> </timezone>
>
> <timezone type="America/Detroit">
>         <usesMetazone mzone="America_Eastern"/>
> </timezone>
>
> <timezone type="America/Toronto">
>         <usesMetazone mzone="America_Eastern"/>
> </timezone>
>
> And metazone "America_Eastern" define display names -
>
> <metazone type="America_Eastern">
>         <long>
>                 <generic>Eastern Time</generic>
>                 <standard>Eastern Standard Time</standard>
>                 <daylight>Eastern Daylight Time</daylight>
>         </long>
> </metazone>
>
> <metazone type="America_Eastern">
>         <short>
>                 <generic>ET</generic>
>                 <standard>EST</standard>
>                 <daylight>EDT</daylight>
>         </short>
> </metazone>
>
>
> These names are translated into various languages.  For example, in French 
> -
>
> <metazone type="America_Eastern">
>         <long>
>                 <generic>heure de l’Est</generic>
>                 <standard>heure normale de l’Est</standard>
>                 <daylight>heure avancée de l’Est</daylight>
>         </long>
>         <short>
>                 <generic>HE</generic>
>                 <standard>HNE</standard>
>                 <daylight>HAE</daylight>
>         </short>
> </metazone>
>
>
> However, by the nature of zones in the tz database, such mappings are 
> historic.  For example, "America/Indiana/Knox" is moving back and forth 
> between Estern Time and Central Time.  See the data maintained by CLDR 
> project below -
>
> <timezone type="America/Indiana/Knox">
>         <usesMetazone to="1991-10-27 07:00" mzone="America_Central"/>
>         <usesMetazone to="2006-04-02 07:00" from="1991-10-27 07:00" 
> mzone="America_Eastern"/>
>         <usesMetazone from="2006-04-02 07:00" mzone="America_Central"/>
> </timezone>
>
>
> As you can see, your suggestion might not work well.  For example, you 
> would create a common name for above zone -
>
> Central Time (Knox, Indiana)
>
> But, it is not true between 1991 and 2006.  Of course, you can use the 
> current mapping only.  Even in this case, you still probably need to 
> construct a name from separated sources, not in a single text.
>
> Anyway, CLDR has such data in XML format which can be consumed for your 
> purpose.
>
>
> -Yoshito
>
> Douglass Davis <ddavis at northcarolina.edu> wrote on 04/20/2010 10:38:20 AM:
>
>   
>> Hello All,
>>
>> I am attempting to find a user-friendly list of time zones for users to 
>> select their current time zone.  It would have common names that 
>> timezones are referred to, such as Eastern Time (US and Canada), and/or 
>> city names. This list should map the text to a time zone name such as 
>> "America/New_York." It would also remove multiple listings for what the 
>> user thinks of as the same time zone. Does any one know of such a list?
>>
>> If not, I would like to create one.
>>
>> One thing that perhaps would help is if I could group many timezones by 
>> if they are implemented exactly the same way in 2010. This would make it 
>>     
>
>   
>> easy to remove multiple listings for the "same" time zone.  Also, if 
>> there are any time zones that are strictly there for historical 
>> purposes, I would like to not have them in the list.
>>
>> I will put this list in the public domain if any other application 
>> developers want to use it.
>>
>> Please let me know if you have any suggestions as far as where I could 
>> find this list, or how I could create it.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> -- 
>> Douglass Davis
>> Applications Developer
>> UNC - General Administration
>>
>>     
>
>
>   

-- 
Douglass Davis
Applications Developer
UNC - General Administration
(919) 264-1726