Date:        Fri, 11 Aug 2000 13:00:52 -0400
    From:        Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net>
    Message-ID:  <20000811130052.A17506@noc.untraceable.net>

  | yep.  the sort of thing it does should really be *in* zic.  i agree.

No, that's not the right fix.   There's no way to predict what kind
of crazy rule some legislature somewhere might dream up.  Attempting
to put enough generality into zic to deal with it would probably be
impossible, and certainly be unreasonable.

  | indeed!  since zic is the only program that uses it, the functionality
  | that it provides ought to be *in* zic.

No, that's no different than saying that the tzdata* files should be built
into zic.   yearistype is part of the data set.   It is something that
any random site needs to be able to change if they have a need to
implement some strange timezone rule in a hurry (and waiting for a new
tz data set, let alone code update, is not always an option).

What needs to be fixed is the way zic invokes yearistype when it is
needed, not the existance of it in the first place.

kre