libgweather r188 - in trunk: . data

[danw svn gnome org]

Author: danw
Date: Sun Apr 20 15:03:15 2008
New Revision: 188
URL: http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/libgweather?rev=188&view=rev

Log:
	* data/README.timezones: notes on the timezone hints in
	Locations.xml


Added:
   trunk/data/README.timezones
Modified:
   trunk/ChangeLog
   trunk/data/Makefile.am
   trunk/data/README

Modified: trunk/data/Makefile.am
==============================================================================
--- trunk/data/Makefile.am	(original)
+++ trunk/data/Makefile.am	Sun Apr 20 15:03:15 2008
@@ -52,7 +52,8 @@
 	$(libgweatherlocations_in_files)	\
 	$(libgweatherdtd_DATA)			\
 	check-timezones.sh			\
-	README
+	README					\
+	README.timezones
 
 CLEANFILES =	\
 	$(libgweatherlocations_DATA)		\

Modified: trunk/data/README
==============================================================================
--- trunk/data/README	(original)
+++ trunk/data/README	Sun Apr 20 15:03:15 2008
@@ -55,7 +55,8 @@
 for the country. Countries that only have one timezone (or where the
 majority of the country is covered by a single timezone) should list
 it at the <country> level. Countries with multiple timezones and no
-obvious "default" should not list anything here.
+obvious "default" should not list anything here. (See README.timezones
+for more information about timezones in Locations.xml.)
 
 A <country> can contain <city>s and <location>s directly, or can be
 split into <state>s which contain <city>s and <location>s. The name

Added: trunk/data/README.timezones
==============================================================================
--- (empty file)
+++ trunk/data/README.timezones	Sun Apr 20 15:03:15 2008
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+Notes on assigning <tz-hint>s
+-----------------------------
+
+The <tz-hint> field in Locations.xml.in is used by the clock applet to
+guess the correct time zone that goes with a particular location. As
+the tag name suggests, it is just a hint; the user is allowed to
+override it if the applet guesses wrong. Still, it is nice to have
+them be as close to correct as possible.
+
+
+The timezone names come from the tzdata database; you should have a
+complete list of the current timezones names in
+/usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab. If you are going to be figuring out the
+timezones for a region, it may also be useful to grab the source data
+from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/. (The "tzdataXXXXX.tar.gz" file)
+
+
+The most important thing to realize about tzdata is that it has a
+separate time zone name for every region that has had its own distinct
+timezone rules *at any point since 1970* (the start of UNIX time_t).
+This means that many of the timezones listed are no longer in use and
+can mostly be ignored. Eg, zone.tab lists 11 timezones for Argentina,
+even though as of 2008 all of Argentina is in the same timezone.
+
+In the cases where tzdata has more timezones for a country than the
+government of that country recognizes, Locations.xml.in tries to pick
+one tzdata timezone to correspond to each government-defined timezone,
+and uses those timezones throughout the country rather than using the
+historically-more-specific ones. (This will make it easier to localize
+the names of the timezones in the future.) So, eg, in the mainland
+United States, the four official timezones (Eastern, Central,
+Mountain, and Pacific) are mapped to "America/New_York",
+"America/Chicago", "America/Denver", and "America/Los_Angeles",
+respectively. Regions that have switched from one timezone to another
+in the past (such as parts of Kentucky and Indiana) are simply listed
+according to whichever timezone they are *currently* in, rather than
+picking an appropriate "micro-timezone" such as
+"America/Indiana/Indianapolis".
+
+
+Finally, the names of timezones will occasionally change between
+releases of tzdata. (Eg, "Asia/Calcutta" was recently renamed to
+"Asia/Kolkata" to match the new preferred spelling of that city.)
+Locations.xml.in should always use the most recent names, because
+distros should always be shipping the most recent tzdata, to ensure
+that the daylight-savings-time rules for different countries match the
+latest government decrees.