[Pkg-isocodes-devel] Timezones?

[Aurelien Jarno]

Clytie Siddall a écrit :
> 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

I don't think it is very easy to change the names in tzdata (except if
they are wrong). They are standardized among various UNIX systems, so
the only way it can work is by importing the names from tzdata into
iso-codes. Also a patch to change the names will be difficult to
maintain wrt new upstream versions.