Re: [boost] [date_time] Time zone improvements

Subject: Re: [boost] [date_time] Time zone improvements
From: Rutger ter Borg (rutger_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-02-07 04:22:07

On Monday 01 December 2008, Jeff Garland wrote:
> >
> > A natural step for changing Boost.Date_Time would be to make changes such
> > that the Posix Time Zone supports both formats. I.e.,
> >
> > variant 1) posix_time_zone( ":/etc/localtime" ); or
> >                posix_time_zone( ":/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam"
> > ); variant 2) posix_time_zone( "EST-5EDT,M4.1.0,M10.5.0" );
> >
> > I think both should work as it is from the same standard, and seems to be
> > a natural and consistent starting point to look at changing the
> > interface. Do you agree?
>
> Ok, again it would be wonderful if this could also be deployed to a
> properly configure Windows system -- preferably without changing the
> string.

Yes, the zones can be defined without a full path, e.g., "localtime" 
and "Europe/Amsterdam". For timezone information available on Windows 
systems, there's a mapping from Windows timezone IDs to the standard TZIDs 
available here, 
http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/supplemental/windows_tzid.html, we 
could use the reverse of this mapping. E.g., "America/New_York" -> "Eastern 
Standard Time", etc. for a native windows implementation.

For more Windows-related timezone stuff I found the following link 
informative, http://tinyurl.com/26tp5e. Apparently there's support 
for "Dynamic Timezone Information" in Windows as of Vista. 

> At first blush, I'd like to make as few changes to the abstract timezone as
> possible and would prefer to simply add a new subclass, but I'll keep an
> open mind as we work thru the details.

Let's pick up where we left, 

Cheers,

Rutger