[tz] Troll in the long term

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Mar 25 15:10:49 UTC 2014


Arthur David Olson wrote:
> An interesting long-term exercise: extend (once again) the zic-produced
> POSIX-like time zone string format to cover Troll.

It could be done.  Troll has only 8 people, though (during winter). 
Maybe we should wait for a few years, to make sure they really need to 
change their clocks four times a year, as I'd hate to force dozens of 
programmers to rewrite many thousands of lines of code merely to add a 
feature that isn't really needed.  (I don't mind the part about updating 
billions of computers, as we've mostly automated that.)

I have the sneaking suspicion that Troll's next boss might change the 
Troll rules, rendering the feature unnecessary.  One can only hope.

If we do extend POSIX, we should also support William Willett's original 
daylight-saving-time proposal back in 1907, which would have changed the 
clocks eight times a year!  It was never put into practice, but one 
never knows what those crazy Antarctic scientists will do next.  See 
<http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/willett.html>.

> (Have the in-place extensions been proposed to the POSIX governing body for
> its standard?)

Sorry, I haven't gotten around to that yet.  I would like to do it at 
some point.


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