[tz] draft of change summary for next tz release

Stephen Colebourne scolebourne at joda.org
Tue Sep 17 22:10:43 UTC 2013


Thanks you very much for preparing this, I think it was vital on this occasion.

On 17 September 2013 22:38, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
>   Changes affecting time stamps before 1970
>
>     Some zones have been turned into links, when they differ from
>     existing zones only in older data that was likely invented or that
>     differs only in LMT or transition from LMT.  These changes affect
>     only time stamps before 1943.  The affected zones are:
>     Africa/Juba, America/Anguilla, America/Aruba, America/Dominica,
>     America/Grenada, America/Guadeloupe, America/Marigot,
>     America/Montserrat, America/St_Barthelemy, America/St_Kitts,
>     America/St_Lucia, America/St_Thomas, America/St_Vincent,
>     America/Tortola, and Europe/Vaduz.

>From my perspective, these are the only changes that concern me. The
change was IMO unecessary, deleted longstanding information and gained
little if anything in return. The new values are, from the perspective
of an end consumer, more confusing/worse/wrong than the originals
(accepting that all the data is guesswork does not mean that one guess
should take priority over another when that data has been in existence
for a long time).

If others want to save the deleted data in these locations, then they
need to speak up now. I don't intend on pursuing the matter further
without indications that others understand the dubious nature of these
changes.

Stephen



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