On 2025-12-03 13:53, Paul Eggert via t z wrote:
On 2025-12-03 11:36, Kim Davies via tz wrote:
Some years back, when we identified a spate of government regulators
making time zone policy changes on short notice, we started some
explicit outreach to governments to send messages on what best practices
are and the consequences of doing it poorly. It is something we've
reinforced periodically when we speak with governments around the typical
shift into and out of daylight saving time.
Yes, and I've tried to do that sort of thing as recently as this week, although
the corporation that runs Nunavik hasn't returned my calls....
It looks now as if it may be an organization with a corporate governance
structure, with ownership in government subsidized or owned enterprises, but
staff appear to be drawn mainly from the population of the fourteen N QC Inuit
villages/small towns.
You might have better luck if you care to call the Montreal office, and that may
be more likely to have English (and Inuktitut) speakers available:
https://www.makivvik.ca/contact/
tel:+1-800-361-7052 tel:+1-514-745.8880
Better may be Air Inuit, also based in Montreal, which has published email
addresses, and is responsible for giving IATA SSIM adequate notice of any time
zone or schedule changes which could affect air operations of any flight at any
terminal:
https://www.airinuit.com/en/about-air-inuit/contact-us
mailto:[email protected]
tel:+1-800-361-5933 tel:+1-514-905-9445
Also interested may be N CA mobile operator Ice Wireless, which has served
3G/4G/LTE GSM across Nunavik since 2019, part of Iristel, based in Markham ON,
and would probably like to avoid time zone issues for N QC customers, so having
correctly updated time zone info available, before any changes came into effect,
would be in their and their customers best interests.
The only info is their web pages for their ticketing system and accessibility:
https://www.icewireless.com/complaints
mailto:[email protected]
https://www.icewireless.com/accessibility Accessibility button
mailto:[email protected]
tel:+1-855-474-7423
Would a similar approach to software vendors be desirable, particuarly
notable applications that have a large audience that use naked TZ
identifiers, to encourage them to do something else? If so, what is the
guidance?
Good idea. Currently the only guidance we have is something along the lines of
"Be like tzselect, except nicer with CLDR and/or maps". Which is admittedly
vague. And the guidance is not well organized.
It'd be helpful to add discussion to theory.html or tz-link.html (or even a new
page) that gives more detailed advice. Ideally there would be a reference
implementation that does both CLDR and maps, and we could point developers at
that implementation. All this would be some work, though.
Less work would be ICU middleware which uses the CLDR infrastructure, and could
probably be more easily leveraged to handle gazetteers and map coordinates:
these are all Unicode I18N open source products.
ICANN has general engagement activities with software vendors in areas
like universal acceptance of Internet identifiers and adoption of
emerging technical standards. Maybe if there are talking points around
this can be added to the litany of things they do outreach on.
Thanks, I didn't know that. Is that litany public? How can suggestions for
improvements be made?
Suggest vendor apps localize or internationalize access to time zone selection
in time, calendar, and scheduling components, possibly using facilities provided
by Unicode ICU and CLDR products, to avoid exposing end users to tzdb identifiers.
Apps also have to check if the underlying tzdb identifiers would change if the
underlying tzdb version changes, and how to handle that.
--
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retrancher but when there is no more to cut
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
