[tz] tabs vs spaces

[random832 at fastmail.us]

On Thu, May 2, 2013, at 21:44, Guy Harris wrote:
> We should at least indicate what our policy is there, from "we reserve
> the right to change the format any time we want, deal with it" to
> something stricter.
> 
> We should also make our current specification of the format a little
> easier to find, so that people developing consumers other than zic don't
> write parsers for what they *think* the format is rather than for what we
> *say* it is.

It's currently documented in zic.8 - maybe you're right that there
should be a separate specification for the format.

I think that in general there has been some confusion about what
documents have "official standing" as documentation for the tz project
(either at an IANA level or at a "what the coordinator is going to do,
where the IANA gives him authority" level) - what's in the RFC alone
does not cover all the topics mentioned in zic.8 or the manpages.

The RFC itself is very inadequate to the task. It does not once define
what "the TZ database" actually contains, or the format of any files
within. To the extent that it defines it by reference, one could
interpret it as giving official standing to all of the documentation
files within the project. Or maybe all that authority is delegated to
the TZ coordinator.