From: pinskia@gmail.com
To: "keld@keldix.com" <keld@keldix.com>
Cc: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>,
Marko Myllynen <myllynen@redhat.com>,
GNU C Library <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>,
"libc-locales@sourceware.org" <libc-locales@sourceware.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Remove locale timezone information
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2015 17:14:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <9E94D834-C3AE-48EF-A3A9-9F6707EFDEDB@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20150806143033.GA15854@www5.open-std.org>
> On Aug 6, 2015, at 4:30 PM, keld@keldix.com wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 05, 2015 at 10:56:44PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
>>> On 05 Aug 2015 09:20, Paul Eggert wrote:
>>>> On 08/05/2015 03:22 AM, keld@keldix.com wrote:
>>>> For countries with more timezones, the locale data helps narrowing down the
>>>> choices. And there are not that many countries with more than 1 timezone,
>>>> eg USA, Canada, Russia and Greenland. Many big countries like China and India
>>>> only have 1 timezone
>>>
>>> Actually, China has two time zones: tzdata's Asia/Shanghai and
>>> Asia/Urumqi both reflect officially-kept time. Even Germany has more
>>> than one tzdata entry, due to the a difference in post-1970 history of
>>> timekeeping in its Swiss enclaves. So the problem of many time zones
>>> for one locale is bigger than what you're suggesting, even if we ignore
>>> traveling users (which is a pretty big class to ignore).
>>
>> a cursory search shows many more countries as well:
>> Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan,
>> Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Greenland (does that mean Denmark
>> too?). that's at least 16% of the world's population (35% if you count
>> China).
>
> I am glad you are now coming forward with actual facts, Mike.
> Then we can hopefully find out what the facts are, and probably agree on something.
> I have previously done discussion with people were we were intially
> in violent diagreement, but along the road I got a little wiser and probably
> my opponent also got a little wiser, and we found some workable solutions.
> That is why I keep responding to almost all of pour posts in a technical
> tone, and I hope you could do the same, for the benefit of the glibc project.
>
> I have as you may know been involved with glibc i18n for many years,
> and I designed and speced many of the i18n enhancements over POSIX/C,
> and also provided lots of data for that purpose to the glibc project.
> If I am not corrected with my futurisic ideas, I will probably continue infinitely
> on this path - till now it has led us much of the way to where we are now.
>
> Most of these countries I have already mentioned in previous posts.
> For Greenland, yes, it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but not part
> of the State of Denmark. Greenland has its own country code, and
> thus its own locales.
>
> I also mentioned in previous posts that narrowing the choice of locales down to
> two or three is a big improvement over the current state, even if you cannot
> fully determine a locale for a country. Do you think there is any merit in that
> observation, Mike?
>
> My conclusion was then that the only countries that did not benefit
> hugely on the narrow range of plausible locales were the USA, Canada and Russia.
> But anyway, having to chose between about a dozen different locales that can be presented
> in one display, is a much nicer option than chosing amongst a long list of all glibc
> locales.
>
>> and that's just for the current period of time. as you highlight, if you
>> look back historically, there are other countries that spanned timezones.
>
> Yes, the Olson tz database probably has all these data.
> Still, if you order the timezones for a country in some way, eg order of population,
> or alphabetically, you could probably find a solution that is useful to most
> people. And then you have the option of setting a specific
> TZ variable if you have someting really special. This is UNIX, you know,
> we can tweek it endlessly.
>
>> locales also are not strictly defined by country borders which means the
>> timezone spans are even higher (i'm not counting people who travel).
>
> I doubt this is a big case. And anyway it can be tweeked, as noted above, right?
It is a big case in the gnu community and most open source community where people go to conferences. There is one such starting tomorrow. I doubt I want to force to use the one of the cet locals to get the timezone in Prague.
Thanks,
Andrew
>
> best regards
> Keld
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-08-06 17:14 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 47+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-06-03 15:57 Removing " Marko Myllynen
2015-06-03 21:33 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-03 21:33 ` keld
2015-06-05 8:28 ` Marko Myllynen
2015-08-06 21:45 ` keld
2015-08-06 21:45 ` pinskia
2015-08-06 21:46 ` keld
2015-08-07 2:33 ` Rich Felker
2015-08-07 0:45 ` Mike Frysinger
2015-08-09 21:12 ` keld
2015-08-07 21:49 ` Paul Eggert
2015-08-09 21:12 ` keld
2015-08-09 21:12 ` Paul Eggert
[not found] ` <20150812140837.GA23436@www5.open-std.org>
2015-08-12 21:07 ` Zack Weinberg
2015-08-12 23:13 ` Keld Simonsen
2015-08-12 23:13 ` Allan McRae
2015-08-12 21:07 ` Allan McRae
2015-08-12 21:07 ` Andreas Schwab
2015-08-12 21:07 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-12 14:05 ` [PATCH] Remove " Marko Myllynen
2015-08-05 9:07 ` Mike Frysinger
2015-08-05 11:51 ` keld
2015-08-05 11:51 ` keld
2015-08-05 10:53 ` Mike Frysinger
2015-08-05 11:52 ` keld
2015-08-05 12:39 ` Andreas Schwab
2015-08-05 13:09 ` keld
2015-08-05 13:33 ` Mike Frysinger
2015-08-05 15:56 ` Keld Simonsen
2015-08-05 16:30 ` Joseph Myers
2015-08-06 21:46 ` Keld Simonsen
2015-08-06 21:46 ` Andreas Schwab
2015-08-06 21:46 ` Zack Weinberg
2015-08-06 21:46 ` Joseph Myers
2015-08-06 2:53 ` Mike Frysinger
2015-08-05 11:52 ` Andreas Schwab
2015-08-05 11:52 ` keld
2015-08-05 12:30 ` Andreas Schwab
2015-08-05 13:03 ` keld
2015-08-05 16:30 ` Paul Eggert
2015-08-06 2:56 ` Mike Frysinger
2015-08-06 17:13 ` keld
2015-08-06 17:13 ` Paul Eggert
2015-08-06 17:22 ` keld
2015-08-06 17:14 ` pinskia [this message]
2015-08-06 17:25 ` keld
2015-08-06 17:14 ` keld
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