[tz] McMurdo/South Pole

[Guy Harris]

On Sep 22, 2013, at 3:54 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> Stephen Colebourne wrote:
>> I'm simply asking the tzdb to provide
>> reasonable local time information since the start of global offset
>> fixing for the IDs it provides
> 
> That's being done for McMurdo -- as far as we know, its
> entry is accurate for all time stamps used since it was
> founded, and (as Russ Allbery pointed out) for time stamps
> before McMurdo was founded and for which localtime is undefined,
> it's reasonable to interpret the new entry as being more
> "accurate" than the old.

The old entry said that Something Changed in 1956; the new entry says "just like Auckland".

If nobody ever kept standardized time there before the station was established, then I wouldn't say the new entry is *more* accurate, as the answer to "what was the UTC offset and DST rules, if any, for McMurdo Sound before the station was established?" would, as I see it, be "mu!", so all possible answers other than failing are equally inaccurate.

If there were people there who *did* keep standardized time between 1868-11-02 and {whatever the appropriate date is for the establishment of the station}, *and* they kept New Zealand time, then I *would* say the new entry is more accurate.