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Re: [Pkg-isocodes-devel] Timezones?

Hi,
My vote would be not to merge tzdata translations into iso-codes, but perhaps they could 
share a PO compendium, etc.
The reason is that iso-codes should not be tied to programs, and similarly for tzdata; despite the (current) lack of iso-codes package in debian-volatile, they should be updateable between releases, when there is a change in the data, and program compatability should not be affected.
If the timezone translations are stored in the iso-codes package, then we would need to update the iso-codes package whenever either the iso-codes or timezones data are updated.
BTW, the Zone/City division tzdata is, to my knowledge, not arbitrary: not all cities are listed. but 
ones for which there were significant time zone differences in the past.
e.g I live in Galway, Ireland. Ireland and the UK share the same timezone now, even though it gets called e.g. "British Summer Time" in the summer and "Irish Summer Time" in Ireland, they are in fact changed at the same time. If you look at tzselect, etc. The time zones are listed as Europe/Dublin and Europe/London. This is (to my knowledge) NOT for simple political reasons of different countries: for a while when timezones were originally created, Dublin and London did not share the same timezone. As an astronomer, if I get a dataset, such as comet observations in Galway at the turn of the (19th) century, then I can use the Europe/Dublin tz to record them, knowing that "Dublin Time" prevailed at that time, even when it was several minutes different from London time. This (among other reasons) is why several cities are often used for the same tz; it is for historical rather than random arbitrary reasons. 

- Alastair


On 21 Jan 2008, at 11:08, Clytie Siddall wrote:


Thanks very much for your helpful and enthusiastic answers. :)

On 21/01/2008, at 9:20 PM, Aurelien Jarno wrote:


On Sun, Jan 20, 2008 at 11:20:01AM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:

(if answering, please keep CC and put "X-PTS-Approved: yes" in
headers
so that tzdata@packages.debian.org gets the mail)

Quoting Clytie Siddall (clytie@riverland.net.au):

Hi guys :)

I'm in the middle of one of my running efforts to get developers to
use iso-codes as a plugin/library for their software, so they won't
have long lists of language names, country names, currency names
etc.
in their programs which we have to translate over and over again,
and
which they invariably fail to keep accurate or current.

In this case, it's Evolution (GNOME).

While paging through the huge Evolution translation file, I note
that,
in addition to a lo-o-ng list of language names, and an equally long 
list of time/date data they could get from the locale, Evo lists
timezones. e.g.

#.
#.* These are the timezone names from the Olson timezone data.
#.* We only place them here so gettext picks them up for
translation.
#.* Don't include in any C files.
#.
#: ../calendar/zones.h:7
msgid "Africa/Abidjan"
msgstr "Châu Phi/Abidjan"

Any chance iso-codes will take on timezones?



Could be interesting. But not necessarily the way to go.

However, that'd require some coordination with fellow people who
(well) maintain such stuff. In Debian, the tzdata package is now well 
developed and maintained, for instance.

I don't really know if timezones are normalized in some way. If they
are, it could make sense to imagine moving this to iso-codes (so that 
it could benefit people outside Debian). But timezones data goes far
beyond simple names: it includes information about the shift wrt UTC
as well as Daylight Savings Time information.


If timezones aren't normalized, I think it
would maybe make more sense to keep this in a separate
package/distribution.


tzdata now works on a Zone/City basis. I am not sure the iso-codes
also
define city names.

Then I guess it is mainly a question for the translators. We don't
mind
if the names are translated by hand or using the data from iso-codes
as
long as we have a .po file to drop in debian/po.



From the translator POV, the great advantages of standardizing these
lists via iso-codes are:

1. the original strings are comprehensive, accurate and correctly
spelt (!)

2. we only have to translate them once, and maintain that single
translation

You might be amazed at the number of programs which still have mis-
spelt, inaccurate and messy lists of language names, country names
etc. And we have to translate them again, and again, and submit
detailed bug reports about the inadequacies of the original strings.

So I'm even keener to support iso-codes, including implementing other
information that needs standardizing. ;)

BTW, even if you haven't listed city names yet, and it would be
impractible to list _all_ city names, the timezones are based on
regions and sub-regions, so they are related to iso_3166-2. Perhaps
the city names could be classified as part of a regional name.

For example, as in:

South Australia/Adelaide

the timezone is the capital city tagged on to the state name.

The above is my timezone (+0930, currently +0130), and it is often
left out of supposed comprehensive timezone lists. ;)

Thanks for all your good work. :)

from Clytie

Vietnamese Free Software Translation Team
http://vnoss.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=projects:l10n



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Regards,
Alastair

--
Alastair McKinstry  , <alastair@sceal.ie>     http://blog.sceal.ie
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world 
is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulter, Economist.
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