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1 | @(#)README 7.3 |
2 | ||
3 | "What time is it?" -- Richard Deacon as The King | |
4 | "Any time you want it to be." -- Frank Baxter as The Scientist | |
5 | (from the Bell System film on time) | |
6 | ||
7 | The 1989 update of the time zone package featured | |
8 | ||
9 | * POSIXization (including interpretation of POSIX-style TZ environment | |
10 | variables, provided by Guy Harris), | |
11 | * ANSIfication (including versions of "mktime" and "difftime"), | |
12 | * SVIDulation (an "altzone" variable) | |
13 | * MACHination (the "gtime" function) | |
14 | * corrections to some time zone data (including corrections to the rules | |
15 | for Great Britain and New Zealand) | |
16 | * reference data from the United States Naval Observatory for folks who | |
17 | want to do additional time zones | |
18 | * and the 1989 data for Saudi Arabia. | |
19 | ||
20 | (Since this code will be treated as "part of the implementation" in some places | |
21 | and as "part of the application" in others, there's no good way to name | |
22 | functions, such as timegm, that are not part of the proposed ANSI C standard; | |
23 | such functions have kept their old, underscore-free names in this update.) | |
24 | ||
25 | Support for the tz_abbr variable has been eliminated from this version | |
26 | (to forestall "kitchen sink" complaints from certain quarters :-). | |
27 | ||
28 | Support for Turbo C compilation has also been eliminated; it was present to | |
29 | allow checking in an ANSI-style environment, and such checking is now done with | |
30 | gcc. | |
31 | ||
32 | And the "dysize" function has disappeared; it was present to allow compilation | |
33 | of the "date" command on old BSD systems, and a version of "date" is now | |
34 | provided in the package. The "date" command is not created when you "make all" | |
35 | since it may lack options provided by the version distributed with your | |
36 | operating system, or may not interact with the system in the same way the | |
37 | native version does. | |
38 | ||
39 | Since POSIX frowns on correct leap second handling, the default behavior of | |
40 | the "zic" command (in the absence of a "-L" option) has been changed to omit | |
41 | leap second information from its output files. | |
42 | ||
43 | Be sure to read the comments in "Makefile" and make any changes | |
44 | needed to make things right for your system. | |
45 | ||
46 | To use the new functions, use a "-lz" option when compiling or linking. | |
47 | ||
48 | Historical local time information has been included here not because it | |
49 | is particularly useful, but rather to: | |
50 | ||
51 | * give an idea of the variety of local time rules that have | |
52 | existed in the past and thus an idea of the variety that may be | |
53 | expected in the future; | |
54 | ||
55 | * provide a test of the generality of the local time rule description | |
56 | system. | |
57 | ||
58 | The information in the time zone data files is by no means authoritative; | |
59 | if you know that the rules are different from those in a file, by all means | |
60 | feel free to change file (and please send the changed version to | |
61 | ado@ncifcrf.gov for use in the future). Europeans take note! | |
62 | ||
63 | Thanks to these Timezone Caballeros who've made major contributions to the | |
64 | time conversion package: Keith Bostic; Bob Devine; Robert Elz; Guy Harris; | |
65 | Mark Horton; John Mackin; and Bradley White. Thanks also to Michael Bloom, | |
66 | Art Neilson, Stephen Prince, John Sovereign, and Frank Wales for testing work. | |
67 | None of them are responsible for remaining errors. | |
68 | ||
69 | Look in the ~ftp/pub directory of elsie.nci.nih.gov (128.231.16.1) | |
70 | for updated versions of these files. | |
71 | ||
72 | Please send comments or information to ado@elsie.nci.nih.gov. |