>Michael G. Schabert wrote:
>> >:-)  Of course, what happens to the poor schmuck in Antarctica who
>> >installs NetBSD on his machine and finds that he can't find the
>> >appropriate timezone files?
>>
>> But _why_ do we need so many darn files when there are exactly 24 time
>> zones????? Even if we had 24 "regular" and 24 "DST" it would be much easier.
>
>You would think that there are only 24 timezones, but there aren't.  Due
>to the brilliance of local governments, there are quite a few oddities out
>there.  For example, in the US, I don't think that Arizona obeys DST, so
>it needs a separate one.  All of Russia is one hour behind normal
>timezones IIRC.  There are a number of other little exceptions here and
>there :-)

Umm, if they're not obeying DST, then they're STILL in a standard timezone
:). Also, when they're off-by-one, they're STILL in a standard timezone.
That's the beauty of 24 time zones with a 24-hour clock ;-). No matter what
hour you proclaim it to be, you're still in a regular timezone.

>And don't forget, there are several areas where local time isn't offset
>by an exact number of hours from GMT.  Some Pacific Ocean time zones are
>offset by (some number of hours plus) 30 minutes, and one or two by 15
>minutes, IIRC!
>
>And then, there's the time zone that contains the Internation Date Line.
>One time zone, but two different date/times...

Bill& Paul's suggestion of off-by-30 & off-by-15 time is the only exception
that really would need a separate timezone file.

Still, this puts us at much better numbers than having 20 files each giving
the same exact time! What a waste. If a guy in New York City doesn't know
that he's on Eastern time, he shouldn't be meddling with Un*x.

Just doing a quick glance, I see that there are around 150 files to cover
the Americas!!! That's rediculous.

Just my opinions,
Mike

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