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author | Perberos <[email protected]> | 2011-12-01 21:42:39 -0300 |
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committer | Perberos <[email protected]> | 2011-12-01 21:42:39 -0300 |
commit | fe8aea1c3b5348347633da18a02b0bffd3b266a1 (patch) | |
tree | 9881bf77df7572844707cc7c50bd8ca6b5a97076 /data/README.timezones | |
download | libmateweather-fe8aea1c3b5348347633da18a02b0bffd3b266a1.tar.bz2 libmateweather-fe8aea1c3b5348347633da18a02b0bffd3b266a1.tar.xz |
moving from https://github.com/perberos/mate-desktop-environment
Diffstat (limited to 'data/README.timezones')
-rw-r--r-- | data/README.timezones | 47 |
1 files changed, 47 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/data/README.timezones b/data/README.timezones new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8f82bac --- /dev/null +++ b/data/README.timezones @@ -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. |