Re: itl library - two questions

[Thamer Mahmoud <neokuwait at hotmail dot com>]

Abdulhaq writes:
 > assalaamu `alaykum
 > 
 > to those brothers working on the ITL library, I have some requests for 
 > information:
 > 
 > 1 - do you have a database of locations with their lat/long? I got mine from 
 > trawling the internet and only really found a list of international airports. 
 > Useful but not great.


Assalamu Alaykom, 


If you're after compiling your own list of Latitude/Longitude info then
I don't think you'll ever find a more accurate or complete source than the
Geospatial engine, available here:

http://geoengine.nima.mil  ("find" tab in bottom frame)

For ready made Latitude and longitude data, see:
http://www.bcca.org/misc/qiblih/latlong.html

... and for GMT differences:
http://www.bcca.org/misc/fasttime/timezones.html


 > 
 > 2 - do you have much info on the summer time (DST) start and end
 > date rules for around the world? I managed to collate a certain
 > amount of info and have coded for Europe, US and Australia. It
 > seems you've side-stepped the issue for now, what's your plans?
 > 

At the library level, there is only a DST switch to add one hour to
each computed salat. The optimal way of setting this switch is by
getting this info from the OS if possible. For example, the Microsoft
Win32 API provides code for checking if the current system time is
running under DST status or not. See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sysinfo/base/gettimezoneinformation.asp

I'm not sure if there is an equivalent of this on linux or Qt, but are
you aware of this effort: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm 

It may save you time ;-)


Regards,

Thamer Mahmoud