[tz] zoneinfo : ist : error

[Guy Harris]

On Dec 21, 2012, at 12:49 AM, Mayuresh Kathe <mayuresh at wolfman.devio.us> wrote:

> population wise, mumbai (bombay) is quite larger than kolkata (calcuta), and will continue to grow in "density" (which should be the real measure).

If you mean that population density rather than raw population should be the real measure, no, it shouldn't.  That would make the tz name for the US Pacific time zone America/San_Francisco (city population, 805,235; population density, 6,632.9/km2) rather than America/Los_Angeles (city population, 3,792,621; population density, 3,124/km2), which would make no sense whatsoever.

If you mean that expected growth, as well as current raw population, should be taken into account, that might be a reasonable argument.

> but, just like kolkata is at the eastern extreme, closer to +0600,

But Kolkata isn't +0600, it's +0530, right?  If so, then it's irrelevant where it's located - the rules, as Robert Elz noted, pay no attention to the geographical location of the city, other than "is it in the region to which the offset from UTC and rules in question apply?"

> mumbai, is at the western extreme, closer to +0500.

Same argument there.

> if, what i've read is right, please note, delhi would be more apt because it fits the bill better than either mumbai or kolkata;
> 1. delhi is more populous than kolkata.

Kolkata: 2011 population, according to the Wikipedia (they refer to the Indian government census site, but it has an Excel spreadsheet and I'm too lazy to download and check it, so I'll assume whoever made the Wikipedia entry did) - city 4,486,679, metropolitan area 14,112,536

Delhi: 2011 population, according to the Wikipedia (again, they refer to the Indian government census site) - city 11,007,835, metropolitan area 21,753,486

Mumbai: 2011 population, according to the Wikipedia (see above) - city 18,414,288, metropolitan area 20,748,395

so if you go by the city proper, it should be Mumbai, and if you go by the metropolitan area, it should be Delhi.

> 2. delhi is closer to +0530 than either mumbai or kolkata.

Irrelevant, as noted above.

> 3. delhi has no name change problems like mumbai, kolkata, chennai, etc.

That's also not a criterion in the rules.  There may be other cities used for tznames that have had name changes since the database was created.

> 4. having delhi as the marker for india gives every indian a sense of
>   pride which is absent in the case of any other indian city.

An excellent reason why the database should just assign random strings as tznames - we won't get people complaining about the city that was chosen (hey, how do you think we northern Californians like having LA supply the name for the zone? :-)).