README revision 2702 
150479Speter@(#)README	7.5
248730Siwasaki
348730Siwasaki"What time is it?" -- Richard Deacon as The King
480029Sobrien"Any time you want it to be." -- Frank Baxter as The Scientist
5124786Sru					(from the Bell System film on time)
660601Sbde
748730SiwasakiThe 1989 update of the time zone package featured
8298107Sgjb
9298107Sgjb*	POSIXization (including interpretation of POSIX-style TZ environment
10208075Suqs	variables, provided by Guy Harris),
11201390Sed*	ANSIfication (including versions of "mktime" and "difftime"),
12275054Sbapt*	SVIDulation (an "altzone" variable)
1348730Siwasaki*	MACHination (the "gtime" function)
14208289Suqs*	corrections to some time zone data (including corrections to the rules
1548730Siwasaki	for Great Britain and New Zealand)
1648730Siwasaki*	reference data from the United States Naval Observatory for folks who
1748730Siwasaki	want to do additional time zones
1848730Siwasaki*	and the 1989 data for Saudi Arabia.
1948730Siwasaki
20(Since this code will be treated as "part of the implementation" in some places
21and as "part of the application" in others, there's no good way to name
22functions, such as timegm, that are not part of the proposed ANSI C standard;
23such functions have kept their old, underscore-free names in this update.)
24
25Support for the tz_abbr variable has been eliminated from this version
26(to forestall "kitchen sink" complaints from certain quarters :-).
27
28Support for Turbo C compilation has also been eliminated; it was present to
29allow checking in an ANSI-style environment, and such checking is now done with
30gcc.
31
32And the "dysize" function has disappeared; it was present to allow compilation
33of the "date" command on old BSD systems, and a version of "date" is now
34provided in the package.  The "date" command is not created when you "make all"
35since it may lack options provided by the version distributed with your
36operating system, or may not interact with the system in the same way the
37native version does.
38
39Since POSIX frowns on correct leap second handling, the default behavior of
40the "zic" command (in the absence of a "-L" option) has been changed to omit
41leap second information from its output files.
42
43Be sure to read the comments in "Makefile" and make any changes
44needed to make things right for your system.
45
46To use the new functions, use a "-lz" option when compiling or linking.
47
48Historical local time information has been included here not because it
49is 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
58The information in the time zone data files is by no means authoritative;
59if you know that the rules are different from those in a file, by all means
60feel free to change file (and please send the changed version to
61tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov for use in the future).  Europeans take note!
62
63Thanks to these Timezone Caballeros who've made major contributions to the
64time conversion package:  Keith Bostic; Bob Devine; Paul Eggert; Robert Elz;
65Guy Harris; Mark Horton; John Mackin; and Bradley White.  Thanks also to
66Michael Bloom, Art Neilson, Stephen Prince, John Sovereign, and Frank Wales
67for testing work.  None of them are responsible for remaining errors.
68
69Look in the ~ftp/pub directory of elsie.nci.nih.gov (128.231.16.1)
70for updated versions of these files.
71
72Please send comments or information to ado@elsie.nci.nih.gov.
73