<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="auto">Maybe you are late to the game, but there was no reliable source of historical timezone data except for tz. This source of historical data is unfortunately, step by step, being scrubbed in tz.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Numerous applications for historical research (astronomy, astrology, family history, general recent history since the 1800s) depend on having historical tz data, even pre-1970 data.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If tz is not going to be the repository for this data, then tz must be formed so that this historical data has a place to be captured.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">When I read an astronomical journal and read of a bolide sighting in 1957 at 7:30 PM in haiti, it is important that I can attach that to a ut in 1957. But if it's now in the 'merged data' I am now out of luck.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">This is my biggest issue (of several) with the most recent changes.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div id="composer_signature" dir="auto"><div style="font-size:85%;color:#575757" dir="auto">Sent from my Galaxy</div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div align="left" dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:#000000"><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Watson Ladd via tz <tz@iana.org> </div><div>Date: 2021-09-20 19:23 (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: Howard Hinnant <howard.hinnant@gmail.com> </div><div>Cc: Time Zone Mailing List <tz@iana.org> </div><div>Subject: Re: [tz] Preparing to fork tzdb </div><div><br></div></div>On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 9:51 AM Howard Hinnant via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:<br>><br>> The C++20 standard has adopted the IANA timezone database (not the code) as the basis for a major part of its API: http://eel.is/c++draft/time.zone#general-1<br>><br>> I plea for stability. That doesn’t mean no changes. But it does mean no drastic changes.<br><br>Unfortunately you are held hostage to the wishes of British Canadian<br>chicken farmers, Indiana counties, etc, etc. in determining what the<br>zones will be. The set of zones may increase due to post-1970 changes<br>in ways that we cannot predict. And the C++20 standard thankfully does<br>not include the list of zones in the API.<br><br>The objections to removal of the pre-1970 data (which affects very few<br>users on computers) seem to be about ancillary effects on the number<br>of zones, and I think the discussion should be about the zone names<br>themselves. The TZ database has never had a one name per country at<br>least policy.<br><br>Sincerely,<br>Watson Ladd<br>><br>> Howard<br>><br></body></html>