[Pkg-isocodes-devel] Timezones?

[Aurelien Jarno]

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 at packages.debian.org gets the mail)
> 
> Quoting Clytie Siddall (clytie at 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.


-- 
  .''`.  Aurelien Jarno	            | GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73
 : :' :  Debian developer           | Electrical Engineer
 `. `'   aurel32 at debian.org         | aurelien at aurel32.net
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