On 10/8/07, *J. Clifford Dyer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 08, 2007 at 01:13:24PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote regarding Re: pytz has so many
timezones!:
>
> On Oct 8, 1:03 pm, Carsten Haese < [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 10:41 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > For example, Windows has seperate listings for
> >
> > > Central America
> > > Central Time (US & Canada)
> > > Guadalahara, Mexico City, Monterry - New
> > > Guadalahara, Mexico City, Monterry - Old
> > > Saskatchewan
> >
> > > but they are all GMT-6
> >
> > But they could have different rules for Daylight Saving Time.
>
> Which only matters if you're setting your clock.
>
Maybe this is where I'm not understanding you: Do you have another
use for setting a timezone? The only thing a time zone does, as far
as I can tell, is set clocks relative to a shared conception of time.
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http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> How about a calendar entry: I've got six people in places all over the
> world to get on the phone together. If the app doesn't know their
> notion of a time zone, that will never happen.
>
> How about financial transactions: time-stamping transactions that move
> around the world seems pretty useful to me. How do I know when said
> transaction started if I can't convert the user's time into the
> server's time?
>
> Timezone is just another localization setting. It is no different
> than language or keyboard layout. It is a piece of data that
> describes the "world" the user lives in. Unfortunately, DST makes
> them very complex because DST is determined by the country and can
> change from year to year. I think the US' DST change this year had
> more of a real-world impact than Y2K (of course, people actually
> planned for Y2K, but that is a different story :).
>
> tj
>
OK. Those all make sense, but I think they contradict mensanator's
statement that DST and half-hour offsets "only matter[] if you're
setting your clock." None of those are meaningful with 25 generic time
zones, which was what I was trying to understand. Under what normal
circumstances (outside of the US military creating an approximation for
their own internal usage) could 25 tzs be a useful abstraction?
Cheers,
Cliff
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