[Pkg-isocodes-devel] Timezones?

[Clytie Siddall]

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 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.
>

 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