Re: [Tzdist] Next step

[Doug Royer <[e-mail]>]

On 10/19/2015 01:00 PM, Cyrus Daboo wrote:
> Hi Doug,
> 
> --On October 19, 2015 at 12:56:11 PM -0600 Doug Royer
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>>> I would prefer just geo URI -> tzid, and leave address->geo to some
>>> other service (since that is useful in a number of other situations -
>>> not just tzdist).
>>
>> The database should be separate, political boundaries change and who
>> would keep up with (example) the city limits of Wells Nevada so the
>> database can correctly map it to Mountain time when the rest of Nevada
>> uses Pacific time?
>>
> 
> It is true that there are already web services that do that kind of
> thing (see e.g.,
> <http://www.geonames.org/export/web-services.html#timezone>). The
> question is whether that would be valuable for a client to do directly
> along side tzdist - or would we just let them rely on their existing
> "date-time/timezone" picker UI.
> 

Postal codes don't always map to time zones. When you live way out in
the country, the postal code can be more than 20 miles away from the
city with the same name.  The postal code is designed to route
snail-mail to your home, not define your physical location.

I know postal codes can cross time zones, city boundaries and perhaps
county boundaries, not aware of any state boundary issue. I picked the
Wells Nevada example for that reason. Some rural residents that live out
of the city limits have Wells zip codes because it is the nearest post
office. And they are not in the same time zone as Wells NV.

That would make the database a real mess to keep up to date.

-- 

Doug Royer - (http://K7DMR.us / http://DougRoyer.US)
[e-mail]
714-989-6135