[tz] Bugs in Russia - Seven month past since 2011-09-17 - still not fixed

[Alan Barrett]

On Wed, 02 May 2012, Tobias Conradi wrote:
>>>>> http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-September/008809.html
>>>>> http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-October/008937.html
>>
>> Please could you explain the problems
> The problem is that the tz zones mentioned are wrong according 
> to the definition in the Theory file, if the sources provided 
> are correct.
>> and the suggested fixes?
> They are here
> http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2011-September/008809.html
> search for "Suggested"

Sorry, it's still incomprehensible to me.  (I am skipping over the 
Russian text, and reading only the English parts.)

I see things like "Suggested new zone: Asia/Barnaul, split 
from Asia/Omsk" but I see no explanation of how the rules 
in the new Asia/Barnaul zone would differ from the rules in 
Asia/Omsk, or why.  A little research tells me that Barnaul is the 
administrative centre of Altai Krai, which is a region of Russia, 
but that too was not explained in the message.

>> The links to archived messages are not helpful,
> To me they are.
>
>> because the archived messages do not contain clear descriptions 
>> of the problems
>
> "That is the changes as written down in the Russian Wikipedia 
> lead to contiguous zones at any time, while the current rules in 
> tzdata do not."

Perhaps if I could read Russian, "the changes as written down in 
the Russian Wikipedia" would mean something to me.  Could you 
translate?

> - "changes" means "changes in offset from Moscow Time"
> - "zones" means "zones with same offset from Moscow Time"

I also did not understand your usage of "contiguous zones", 
because it was not clear that you were using "zone" in an 
unfamiliar way.

>> or suggested fixes.
> What is not clear about the fixes suggested in link #1?

The whole message was unclear.  Perhaps if you translated the 
Russian parts, and wrote the English parts in full sentences, it 
would make more sense.  Also, with my new understanding of what 
you meant by "contiguous zones", I may now be able to figure out 
the original messages, but I am not motivated to do so.

> But anyway, as long as as one of the main maintainers makes up 
> new rules on the fly ("The first order of business is to ensure 
> that current (2012) time stamps are handled correctly throughout 
> Russia.")  every contributor may learn that suggested fixes are 
> sometimes not integrated even if fully explained, for reasons 
> that are not specified in the Theory file.

Regarding the first half of your sentence, I see no problem with 
one of the main maintainers deciding that it's more important 
to fix rules that affect current timestamps than it is to fix 
rules that affect timestamps in the past.  I won't respond to the 
implied accusations in the second half of your sentence.

--apb (Alan Barrett)