Philippe Verdy scripsit: > I do agree. The fact that both "Europe/Istanbul" and "Asia/Istanbul" > are referenced is probably not really political, but it reflects > the fact that this city is on both continents, and that it's timezone > covers more than just this city. Someone leaving on the Asian area near > the city, but not in Istanbul must just wonder why its timezone is not > defined in the "Asia" subcategory, and why he must select it in Europe > (the reverse is possible).
Correct. > So the database aliases one to the other. Aliases are used for timezones > that are compeltely equivalent on the whole timeframe considered > (apparently only starting in the early years of last century). The cutoff date is 1970-01-01; if two timezones have been the same ever since then, they are not separately encoded *unless* they are in separate national jurisdictions (because after all it is the nation-state which sets up the rules). This date is the Posix zero point. > when in fact solar time was most frequently used (with lots of > approximations) rather than official times. Standard time dates to the 1890s in Europe and North America; basically, its existence reflected the need for railroads to use a single time zone (or as few as possible). > What I don't know is if the Riyadh Solar Time is still in use today in > Sauda Arabia (the Olson's database only contains rules for 1987-1989). > in I believe that it is not. The intention was to set sunset (the beginning of the Islamic day) to 00:00 local time, but the difficulties in doing so were simply too great. > As well the "yearistype.sh" script is quite bogous if used to determine > leap years (is it useful or correct for US election years?). It is (the U.S. elects presidents in years that are divisible by 4 and greater than 1787, when the present constitution came into effect). No actual time zone depends on whether the year is a presidential election year, though the idea was proposed at one time. -- "But the next day there came no dawn, John Cowan and the Grey Company passed on into the [EMAIL PROTECTED] darkness of the Storm of Mordor and were http://www.ccil.org/~cowan lost to mortal sight; but the Dead http://reutershealth.com followed them. --"The Passing of the Grey Company"
