pytz has so many timezones!

[mensanator at aol.com]

On Oct 9, 8:34 am, "Diez B. Roggisch" <de... at nospam.web.de> wrote:
> mensana... at aol.com wrote:
> > On Oct 8, 1:03 pm, Carsten Haese <cars... at uniqsys.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 10:41 -0700, mensana... at aol.com wrote:
> >> > For example, Windows has seperate listings for
>
> >> > Central America
> >> > Central Time (US & Canada)
> >> > Guadalahara, Mexico City, Monterry - New
> >> > Guadalahara, Mexico City, Monterry - Old
> >> > Saskatchewan
>
> >> > but they are all GMT-6
>
> >> But they could have different rules for Daylight Saving Time.
>
> > Which only matters if you're setting your clock.
>
> That's BS. If I'm supposed to be attending a video-conference that spans a
> few continents which is scheduled using a web-app, it's VITAL that I get
> the invitation and reminder rendered in MY local timezone, DST included.
>
> And for the matter of
>
> """
> There are only 25 timezones: -12, -11, ... -1, 0 (GMT), +1, ... +11,
> +12.
> """
>
> who says that timezones have to be separated by one hour each?

The Earth says. It takes 24 hours to revolve.

> Why aren't they separated by 30minutes, or 20, or 10? Or 2 hours?

Why isn't an hour defined to be 30 minutes?

> Or why don't we have a global time?

Like UTC?

>
> Your 25 timezones are an abstraction the same way

Not the same way at all. The 25 timezones I speak of are
not merely an abstraction, but related to longitude.

> as are the 400 apparently in use by people all over the world

Where the correlation to longitude is much looser.
Granted, it doesn't need to be for non-navigational
purposes. And although governments can legislate things
like DST, they can't legislate longitude.

> - and last time I checked, there was no
> fundamental law in physics or such that limited the allowed or sensible
> number of timezones...

Isn't there some law somewhere that says the circumference
of a sphere is 360deg? Doesn't that same law mean that no two
points on a sphere can be seperated by more than 180deg
longitude? Doesn't that make GMT+13 non-sensible?

>
> Diez