[Seaside] Re: Time Zone Point of Curiosity

[Alan Lovejoy]

Michael Rueger <m.rueger <at> acm.org> writes:

> 
> Alan Lovejoy wrote:
> 
> > Well, that's better than nothing--although "experimental" code (that's not 
well 
> > known, isn't installed by default, and may not work on all platforms) just 
> > doesn't make the grade.
> 
> Feel free to add the required functionality, it's OpenSource, you know...

Funny you should mention that, because in a way, I in fact have solved this 
problem (i.e., how to determine which time zone ruleset represents local 
time.)  I am the author of the Chronos Date/Time Library, which is available 
for Squeak [http://www.chronos-st.org].

The VisualWorks version of Chronos can figure out which Olson timezone best 
represents local time, based on information provided by the operating system. 
It can do this in several ways:

1) By reading the value of the TZ environment variable (Unix, MacOSX or 
Windows.)
2) By reading the time zone ruleset out of the Windows registry. [The Dolphin 
version of Chronos also does this.]
3) By finding the most likely/best match to an Olson timezome based on both the 
current sytem timezone offset and the system country code.

Note item 3.  The Squeak version of Chronos should be able to use the Locale 
package to do the same thing in Squeak. I intend to add that enhancement to 
Chronos.