Re: Can or should the NTP protocol eventually serve timezone data?

Hal Murray wrote:
In article <slrnh3k09c.1s1j.nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Rob <nomail@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

So your standpoint is that every system builder who wants to do
such localization should be on their own, providing their own update
mechanism, and there should not be a universal update mechanism for
timezone updates that is neutral to operating system?

Why have a special update mechanism for time zone data? Why
not piggy back on updating everything else? Isn't that the
way it works now for most people?


It has very little to do with NTP. NTP is UTC only. How you torture UTC to get your preferred local time is entirely up to you. You need not do it at all if you don't want to.

Kludging local timezone conversions into the NTP protocol somehow would be a nightmare if you could persuade anyone to do it! 24 or more timezones with more or less arbitrary and constantly changing rules in every jurisdiction. . . . Hundreds of such jurisdictions. . . .

The operating systems I'm familiar with (Windows, VMS, Solaris, & Linux) all make some provision for converting UTC to one or more desired timezones for display. Local time, whatever it might be, is *your* problem.
.

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