Subject: [VCARDDAV] The TZ registry

From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:19:10 -0700

Hi folks,
One thing I forgot to mention during the discussion today: CalConnect was 
planning on a registry of timezone names but we wanted to have these as 
urns, probably urn:tzid:XXX etc. I think this is a reasonable use of urns 
and provides a way to unambiguously indicate the scope of identifiers we 
are using.

So if we choose to adopt this approach, the TZ document would need to 
register the new urn scheme, and then define the tzid registry where one of 
the attributes of the registry is the timezone's urn identifier.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:47:35 -0400

> and provides a way to unambiguously indicate the scope of identifiers we are
> using.
>

This is reasonable.  I've just submitted, for first-version approval
by the chairs, draft-ietf-vcarddav-tzregistry-00.  It's got the basic
stuff in it, without any attempt to put the Olsen DB in there yet.

Cyrus, when it's actually posted, please post what has to be changed
in the document in order to connect to CalConnect.

Barry

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:04:22 -0700

Barry,
 as co-chair, I will deny your request to have a
draft-ietf-vcarddav-tzregistry as draft-ietf-vcarddav. I think this is
too early. I would suggest that you send it as an individual draft for
now and we will consider it as wg document when it is right time.

sorry.

Marc.

Barry Leiba a écrit :
> _______________________________________________
> VCARDDAV mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vcarddav

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---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:08:58 -0400

> now and we will consider it as wg document when it is right time.

Um, OK.  But then you shouldn't have agreed in the meeting to have it
accepted as a WG document.

I'll re-submit it as an individual, and ask you to be clear next time.

Barry

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:12:19 -0700

> accepted as a WG document.

- sorry if I was not clear enough.
- to me, the wg should agree that the document becomes a wg document.
the current problem is that the draft does not exist yet... therefore,
how can it be adopted as a wg document?

Marc.

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:17:56 -0400

> how can it be adopted as a wg document?

Well, I don't agree with your interpretation, but there's no point in
arguing about it here.  I've resubmitted it as draft-leiba-tzregistry.

Barry

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:20:19 -0400

Et voilà:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A new version of I-D, draft-leiba-tzregistry-00.txt has been
successfuly submitted by Barry Leiba and posted to the IETF
repository.

Filename:        draft-leiba-tzregistry
Revision:        00
Title:           Definition of IANA Registry for Timezone Names
Creation_date:   2009-03-25
WG ID:           Independent Submission
Number_of_pages: 4

Abstract:
VCards need a stable, well defined list of timezone names, so that
users can create VCards that refer to timezones.  There is no common
list of such names, and other standards need timezone names also.
This document creates an IANA registry of timezone names, and
initially populates the list.Initial version

o  Define timezone registry.

o  Defer initial population with Olsen database until we like the

basic document.

The IETF Secretariat.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Dave Thewlis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:39:34 -0700

To be precise it is "Olson" database with two "o"s, not "Olsen" database.

-- 
*Dave Thewlis, Executive Director
Calconnect - The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium*
+1 707 840 9391 (voice) · +1 707 498 2238 (mobile)
http://www.calconnect.org · [email-masked] 
<mailto:[email-masked]>

---

From: Kurt Zeilenga <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:42:02 -0700

Vcarddav'ers:

During our recent face-to-face meeting, it was suggested the WG do  
work to create a TZ registry.  Please consider whether the WG should  
take on work in this area and whether this I-D is a suitable basis for  
that work and comment on this list.  The chairs intend to make a  
decision within the next 10 days.

Barry, thanks for putting this together so quickly.

-- Kurt

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:47:16 -0700

Kurt Zeilenga wrote:
> During our recent face-to-face meeting, it was suggested the WG do work
> to create a TZ registry.  Please consider whether the WG should take on
> work in this area and whether this I-D is a suitable basis for that work
> and comment on this list.  The chairs intend to make a decision within
> the next 10 days.

After reviewing the draft, I think the WG should take on work in this
area and this I-D is a suitable basis for that work.

Simon
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---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:59:21 -0700

>Et voilà:
Thanks for doing that.
draft-ietf-calsify-rfc2445bis-09.txt has the following example:
  America/New_York

So I think you need to at least allow for "/" and "_".

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:03:18 -0700

> draft-ietf-calsify-rfc2445bis-09.txt has the following example:

The exact syntax is in draft-ietf-calsify-rfc2445bis-09.txt is '["/"] 
paramtext'.

   SAFE-CHAR     = WSP / %x21 / %x23-2B / %x2D-39 / %x3C-7E
                   / NON-US-ASCII
      ; Any character except CONTROL, DQUOTE, ";", ":", ","

   paramtext     = *SAFE-CHAR

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:04:42 -0700

>area and this I-D is a suitable basis for that work.
+1 (as an individual contributor).

---

From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:44:46 -0700

Hi Kurt,

> Barry, thanks for putting this together so quickly.

Please cc the calsify mailing list on this as there is potential impact 
there too.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:27:18 +0100

Barry,

I have two concerns with the draft.

First, I am concerned that if we actually do import TZ names from Olson 
we will have a change control problem.  Who gets to add names?  Olson 
et. al, or anyone?  What happens if the database gets out of sync?  Even 
if we establish a clear linkage it would require effort to keep the IANA 
registry up to date.

An alternative approach would be to create a URI or URN that explicitly 
states the authority for the namespace.  The authority would hence be 
the only thing that would need registering, and that would happen only 
under very closely scrutinized review, given the desire for 
interoperability.

Second, I would prefer to know that we are doing this work in 
collaboration with the tz folk.  As such, I am CC'ing Paul Eggert & 
Arthur David Olson.

If you're so inclined to go with a UR[I or N], I would be happy to work 
with you to clean things up.

Eliot

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:20:35 +0100

Thanks, Barry.

On 3/26/09 3:48 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:
> Eliot, thanks.  In case you hadn't been following from home (it was
> late for you; I'm sure you were snug in bed)

Coughing away :-(
> , this was in response to
> a discussion in the vcarddav session, and we'd discussed the Olsen DB
> and the CalConnect work.

Right.  This is a bit of an "elephant in the room" discussion, when it 
comes to Olson.

>    The point of getting the doc written was
> exactly to get feedback like this, on the best way to set up a
> registry that allowed us to have current TZ information without having
> to rev RFCs all the time as things change, and without having to worry
> about the longevity of documents or web sites outside the IETF's
> control.
>    

I did not propose to reference the Olson database by a web site.  Is 
that what people want?

> Who would the authority be, and what would *their* effort be in
> keeping it up?  If the authority is an external entity, what does the
> IETF do to maintain synchronization with them, and what happens when
> they go away or go dormant, or whatever?
>    

I think we all agree that the tz folk have done a spectacular job.  We 
talk about community efforts, but these guys are really unsung heroes.
> I suppose one answer to that question is that we can point to someone
> else's work for now (like Olson), and if we need to change, in the
> worst case we can create our own (no worse than maintaining the copy
> that's proposed here), and point to that.
>
>    
Yes!  I've always thought that the problem isn't today, but the future, 
when Mssrs Olson and Eggert and some of the other heavy weights retire.  
If we go with a more indirect approach, such as a URI or URN, we can 
make that tomorrow's problem, and it might not ever be a problem.

>> Second, I would prefer to know that we are doing this work in collaboration
>> with the tz folk.  As such, I am CC'ing Paul Eggert&  Arthur David Olson.
>>      
> I agree that we should do that.  But your note is not CC'ed to them.  Oversight?
>
>    
Doh!

Eliot

---

From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:04:52 -0700

Hi Eliot,

--On March 26, 2009 10:27:18 AM +0100 Eliot Lear <[email-masked]> wrote:

> et. al, or anyone?  What happens if the database gets out of sync? 
> Even if we establish a clear linkage it would require effort to keep the
> IANA registry up to date.

That is a missing piece - who manages change control of this? One 
suggestion is to have an expert review panel in the IETF that stays abreast 
of changes to the tzdata files and keeps the registry up to date. Given 
that there can be half a dozen or more tzdata updates in a year (though not 
all necessarily add new tz names) the IANA update process needs to be 
flexible.

> under very closely scrutinized review, given the desire for

So CalConnect's work initially focussed on only registering "publishers" 
(we have stayed away from using the term "authority" here as there is 
potential confusion with the entity that actual defines the tz rules - i.e. 
governments - we felt "publishers" is a better term to describe what Olson 
does). However, more recently it has become clear that we need a set of 
stable references to the same timezone definitions across multiple 
publishers. Thus registering tznames is something we have decided needs to 
happen.

I do believe that we should have urn's for these: urn:tzid:...

We also had some debate about the form of the identifiers. There was 
concern that the current names are not appropriate as identifiers and 
instead we should use uuid's (with a mapping onto "traditional names"). I 
am not sure about that one...

> collaboration with the tz folk.  As such, I am CC'ing Paul Eggert &

Agreed. In addition I will act as a liason to CalConnect which as you know 
is also working on timezone services etc

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:48:05 -0400

Eliot, thanks.  In case you hadn't been following from home (it was
late for you; I'm sure you were snug in bed), this was in response to
a discussion in the vcarddav session, and we'd discussed the Olsen DB
and the CalConnect work.  The point of getting the doc written was
exactly to get feedback like this, on the best way to set up a
registry that allowed us to have current TZ information without having
to rev RFCs all the time as things change, and without having to worry
about the longevity of documents or web sites outside the IETF's
control.

> First, I am concerned that if we actually do import TZ names from Olson we
> will have a change control problem.  Who gets to add names?  Olson et. al,
> or anyone?  What happens if the database gets out of sync?  Even if we
> establish a clear linkage it would require effort to keep the IANA registry
> up to date.

It would require effort, yes.  On the other hand, it removes external
dependencies that could be problematic in future.  As I note in the
draft, we do have to decide on an update mechanism ("Specification
Required" is certainly not right).

> states the authority for the namespace.  The authority would hence be the
> only thing that would need registering, and that would happen only under
> very closely scrutinized review, given the desire for interoperability.

> with the tz folk.  As such, I am CC'ing Paul Eggert & Arthur David Olson.

> If you're so inclined to go with a UR[I or N], I would be happy to work with
> you to clean things up.

Thanks; I'll appreciate that.  I think Cyrus will also play here,
coordinating us with CalConnect.

Barry