Thread: Re: [PATCHES] Australian timezone configure option

Re: [PATCHES] Australian timezone configure option

From
chris.bitmead@health.gov.au
Date:
I hate the Australian configure option because it means that you can't use the
pre-built postgres
that comes with RedHat or whatever. Surely the correct solution is to have a
config file somewhere
that gets read on startup? That way us Australians don't have to be the only
ones in the world
that need a custom built postgres.




Re: [PATCHES] Australian timezone configure option

From
Thomas Lockhart
Date:
> Surely the correct solution is to have a config file somewhere
> that gets read on startup? That way us Australians don't have to be the only
> ones in the world that need a custom built postgres.

I will point out that "you Australians", and, well, "us 'mericans", are
the only countries without the sense to choose unique conventions for
time zone names.

It sounds like having a second lookup table for the Australian rules is
a possibility, and this sounds fairly reasonable to me. Btw, is there an
Australian convention for referring to North American time zones for
those zones with naming conflicts?

                       - Thomas

Re: Australian timezone configure option

From
ncm@zembu.com (Nathan Myers)
Date:
On Thu, Jun 14, 2001 at 12:23:22AM +0000, Thomas Lockhart wrote:
> > Surely the correct solution is to have a config file somewhere
> > that gets read on startup? That way us Australians don't have to be the only
> > ones in the world that need a custom built postgres.
> 
> I will point out that "you Australians", and, well, "us 'mericans", are
> the only countries without the sense to choose unique conventions for
> time zone names.
> 
> It sounds like having a second lookup table for the Australian rules is
> a possibility, and this sounds fairly reasonable to me. Btw, is there an
> Australian convention for referring to North American time zones for
> those zones with naming conflicts?

For years I've been on the TZ list, the announcement list for a 
community-maintained database of time zones.  One point they have 
firmly established is that there is no reasonable hope of making 
anything like a standard system of time zone name abbreviations work.  
Legislators and dictators compete for arbitrariness in their time
zone manipulations.

Even if you assign, for your own use, an abbreviation to a particular
administrative region, you still need a history of legislation for that 
region to know what any particular time record (particularly and April 
or September) really means.

The "best practice" for annotating times is to tag them with the numeric
offset from UTC at the time the sample is formed.  If the time sample is
the present time, you don't have to know very much make or use it.  If 
it's in the past, you have to know the legislative history of the place 
to form a proper time record, but not to use it.  If the time is in the 
future, you cannot know what offset will be in popular use at that time, 
but at least you can be precise about what actual time you really mean,
even if you can't be sure about what the wall clock says.  (Actual wall 
clock times are not reliably predictable, a fact that occasionally makes 
things tough on airline passengers.)

Things are a little more stable in some places (e.g. in Europe it is
improving) but worldwide all is chaos.

Assigning some country's current abbreviations at compile time is madness.

Nathan Myers
ncm@zembu.com


Re: Re: [PATCHES] Australian timezone configure option

From
Giles Lean
Date:
> It sounds like having a second lookup table for the Australian rules is
> a possibility, and this sounds fairly reasonable to me. Btw, is there an
> Australian convention for referring to North American time zones for
> those zones with naming conflicts?

No.

Named timezones just lose.  For those of us who use machines on both
the Australian and USA East coasts it's nearly useless to see "EST":
   Thu Jun 14 19:54:01 EST 2001

Regards,

Giles