Africa - data error

Jamie jrl at terraatlas.com
Sun Aug 22 17:34:41 UTC 2010


Paul, 

I thought it was a typo... thinking either the WAT is wrong or the -1 is wrong, but...

But then, I read:

# To make things confusing, `WAT' seems to have been used for -1:00 long ago;
# I'd guess that this was because people needed _some_ name for -1:00,
# and at the time, far west Africa was the only major land area in -1:00.
# This usage is now obsolete, as the last use of -1:00 on the African
# mainland seems to have been 1976 in Western Sahara.

So, the same FORMAT = 'WAT' is used for both minus and plus one with FORMAT=WAT.
As it says above WAT is obsolete... the reference is ambiguous but, I suspect I am digging up old news.  Please disregard.

Thanks for your reply.

Jamie

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert at cs.ucla.edu] 
Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2010 12:13 PM
To: tz at lecserver.nci.nih.gov
Cc: Jamie
Subject: Re: Africa - data error

On 08/22/2010 07:58 AM, Jamie wrote:
> I believe I have the latest - please check Africa file - it appears to have
> a minus sign in front of the Feb 1934 date.
>
> Zone	Africa/Niamey	 0:08:28 -	LMT	1912
> 			-1:00	-	WAT	1934 Feb 26

That minus sign is also in our source, namely Shanks & Pottenger.
Quite possibly it's a typo (it wouldn't be the first time), but
it'd be nice to have a source for any fix.





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