Hi guys,

I was wondering if anyone here had a mapping of the 63 timezones
that Microsoft uses to their Olson equivalents.

It's become painfully obvious that having end users choose
a timezone based on the huge list that is provided natively
by DateTime::TimeZone::all_names just isn't very practical
at this time.  (Perhaps in the future when more people are
used to dealing with the Olson names.)

I was originally going to try and create some graphical map
that allowed one to click on the location they lived, but
have since decided to present the same list of 63 time zones
that Microsoft provides.  Since my application only cares
about forward moving time and has no need to convert based
on historical differences, many time zones end up being the
same for my purposes and this change will make the list the
end users need to wade through a bit more intuitive.

I've provided a copy of the 63 timezones below in case anyone
else is interested.

If anyone has already done this work I would appreciate a pointer.
Otherwise I'll go through and do it myself and can post the
results here.  (Probably as html <option value="olson/name">MS Name)

Is there anyway to do some work on TimeZoneCatalog to get some
different kinds of lists (for instance, a shortened list of
timezones that removes zones that only have historical differnces)?
Would anyone be opposed to/in favor of that?

Perhaps this would lead to a new way of working with timezones
where a named list of friendly names is put into the catalog
which serve as aliases to the real Olson Zone.  That way,
programmers could present their users with a list that's
more tailored to their application rather than every zone name...
There could be some predefined lists that we expect many people
will want to use, or the programmer can define their own and
load the named list into the catalog on application startup.
That way later on, the programmer can just call up the catalog
by name and get both the friendly human presentable version that
has been localized to their application and the naked Olson Zone
name it represents.

(For instance, if it's an application for US only, it could
 restrict the list to just those zones and present the user
 with more recognizable names than the Category/City name,
 or like myself, I only care about zones that are different
 from this year forward, and don't care about differences
 that existed in the past because I won't deal with past dates
 so I can restrict the list based on that)


I would hate to overload the categories call for this, but
it seems to serve a similar purpose....

Anyone else have any ideas or pointers?

-- Michael --

The list of the 63 timezones Microsoft recognizes:

GMT-12:00 Eniwetok, Kwajalein
GMT-11:00 Midway Island, Samoa
GMT-10:00 Hawaii
GMT-09:00 Alaska
GMT-08:00 Pacific Time (US & Canada), Tijuana
GMT-07:00 Arizona
GMT-07:00 Mountain Time (US & Canada)
GMT-06:00 Central Time (US & Canada)
GMT-06:00 Mexico City, Tegucigalpa
GMT-06:00 Saskatchewan
GMT-05:00 Bogota, Lima, Quito
GMT-05:00 Eastern Time (US & Canada)
GMT-05:00 Indiana (East)
GMT-04:00 Atlantic Time (Canada)
GMT-04:00 Caracas, La Paz
GMT-04:00 Santiago
GMT-03:00 Newfoundland
GMT-03:00 Brasilia
GMT-03:00 Buenos Aires, Georgetown
GMT-02:00 Mid-Atlantic
GMT-01:00 Azores, Cape Verde Is.
GMT Casablanca, Monrovia
GMT Greenwich Mean Time: Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London
GMT+1:00 Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
GMT+1:00 Belgrade, Bratislava, Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague
GMT+1:00 Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris, Vilnius
GMT+1:00 Sarajevo, Skopje, Warsaw, Zagreb
GMT+2:00 Athens, Istanbul, Minsk
GMT+2:00 Bucharest
GMT+2:00 Cairo
GMT+2:00 Harare, Pretoria
GMT+2:00 Helsinki, Riga, Tallinn
GMT+2:00 Jerusalem
GMT+3:00 Baghdad, Kuwait, Riyadh
GMT+3:00 Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd
GMT+3:00 Nairobi
GMT+3:30 Tehran
GMT+4:00 Adu Dhabi, Muscat
GMT+4:00 Baku, Tbilisi
GMT+4:00 Kabul
GMT+5:00 Ekaterinburg
GMT+5:00 Islamabad, Karachi, Tashkent
GMT+5:30 Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, New Delhi
GMT+6:00 Astana, Almaty, Dhaka
GMT+6:00 Colombo
GMT+7:00 Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta
GMT+8:00 Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Urumqi
GMT+8:00 Perth
GMT+8:00 Singapore
GMT+8:00 Taipei
GMT+9:00 Osaka, Sapporo, Tokyo
GMT+9:00 Seoul
GMT+9:00 Yakutsk
GMT+9:00 Adelaide
GMT+9:30 Darwin
GMT+10:00 Brisbane
GMT+10:00 Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
GMT+10:00 Guam, Port Moresby
GMT+10:00 Hobart
GMT+10:00 Vladivostok
GMT+11:00 Magadan, Solomon Is., New Caledonia
GMT+12:00 Auckland, Wellington
GMT+12:00 Fiji, Kamchatka, Marshall Is.


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