user-friendly time zone list
Douglass Davis
ddavis at northcarolina.edu
Tue Apr 20 21:18:41 UTC 2010
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
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