On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 11:07 AM, Binarus <li...@binarus.de> wrote: > On 11.07.2017 20:50, Bill Ricker wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 4:07 AM, Binarus <li...@binarus.de> wrote: > >> > >> On 10.07.2017 20:14, Eric Brine wrote: > >>> I don't understand the conditions. The law determines when the > switching > >>> of offsets from UTC happen, not some person. The switch doesn't happen > >>> at 08:48:27 am in Chicago; it happens at 2am. > >> > >> This point of view is a bit U.S. centric. Indeed, you are describing how > >> it *should* be, but > > > > We tend to use the timezone nearest us for examples because we're less > > likely to be wrong and thence get dragged into discussing the example > > instead of the concept. > > > > Well, first of all, I did not want to insult or even criticize anybody. > Please forgive me if my wording even made the slightest impression of > doing so - regrettably, I am not a native English speaker. > > Actually, I am feeling the highest respect towards the experts who are > helping with the time zone database updates, are bringing them to a > machine readable form and are writing software modules which are dealing > with the overwhelming bunch of time calculating oddities in an > impressive manner. I am really very grateful for that and can't thank > those volunteer experts enough. > > I just wanted to say that the statement "... the change happens at 2:00 > in Chicago ... " might not be sufficient for my case because I am trying > to write a web application which deals with date and time calculations > in local time zones around the world, and that I'd like the application > to behave well (as far as possible) even in the weirdest cases. >
Chicago was the OP's example. I'm not even American. My point was that the time of change is not up to debate; it's in the time zone db, so the information is available. It's not as arbitrary as I thought the OP made it sound. Others have pointed out this the time zone db can change with very little notice since TZ definitions can change with very little notice.
