[tz] Merged 1970+ time zones should always return -1 pre-1970

Robert Elz kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Wed Sep 29 19:06:58 UTC 2021


    Date:        Wed, 29 Sep 2021 10:08:04 -0700
    From:        Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu>
    Message-ID:  <701226da-b57c-1fa1-a33b-50522a0f6de0 at cs.ucla.edu>

  | No, it is completely absurd. It's not how timezone rule changes work. No 
  | politician, no matter how amateur, would arrange to change the clocks 
  | merely because of Independence Day.

I think that's a stretch.   It is certainly one thing that can be changed
and would indicate that "things are different now" before any of the harder
and more costly changes could be implemented.   Whether that happened or not
I don't know - but I certainly don't simply write it off as absurd.

  | It'd be a major political blunder if 
  | fiddling with the clocks is signaled as one of the most important things 
  | the new legislature or executive could do.

I have seen no evidence of a claim like that, I would not be surprised
to learn there were other issues considered considerably more important.

  | That particular data entry must be wrong,

Sorry, "must be" is not an argument that has any traction with
me at all, no matter what the issue.   Unless you can show it is
impossible (which clearly can't be done here, as it obviously would
have been possible, regardless of how likely it might be considered)
then only evidence of what actually happened will do.

Clearly, unless the assertion is that Mali was never in the -01:00 zone,
there had to be a change sometime, as it now isn't.

Even if it turns out that it was a guess, and is wrong, that is no worse
than the guess in the Honolulu zone is it?   Should that one be removed too?

  | It differs from all other Zones in its combination of UT offsets and 
  | timezone abbreviations.

Eliminating abbreviations is another task that's been undertaken with
some abandon - Honolulu's could be changed to "-10" then it would (post 1970)
be identical to Etc/GMT+10 and you'd have one less zone to manage.

Furthermore, both those changes would surely be more fair and equitable?

kre



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