World time zone map data

Hi all,

I'm usually not concerned with GIS data but perhaps this group is the right
place for my question. Here it is: I'm looking for world time zone (map) data in
a freely accessible format, perhaps ASCII. As far as I know there is only one
public (noncommercial) data set available, namely from Manifold. The problem is
that the files which I've downloaded are in the proprietary Manifold format,
even though the data itself is public domain (GPL). Does anybody know whether
the same data set exists in other formats or is there anybody who has already
converted it?
Or is there another source for world time zone data? I intend to write a small
demo for a programming course which uses a world time clock as the running
example. The time zone map shall be the (interactive) graphical front end of the
demo program.
Any help is very welcome.

Best regards,
Michael

Michael Wegner wrote:


I'm not sure if that's what you mean, but here you can find a PD map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Timezones_optimized.png
As for the time zones numeric data, you should probably take a close
look at some open source programs.

Thanks for the link (I knew the CIA map already but not this Wiki version).
Although this is a quite good map and although it's free this is not really what
I'm looking for since it is a bitmap. The problem is that I want to identify a
time zone (in my to-be-written-program) by mouse clicking. Therefore I think
there is not other way than to use vector data. This means I would need the data
for political boundaries, coast lines and, of course the boundaries of time
zones in any vector oriented format. In the worst case I could digitize the time
zone map somehow but that's not what I want to do and what I have not the
necessary tools for. Or is there any simple method to accomplish this?

bojster wrote: