timezone problem

[Qian Xu]

Hi All,

I am fighting with date time conversion and have a problem right now:
I want to convert a local timestamp to UTC timestamp.
So I have to get the time zone information.
However in some countries (ie. German, US), the offset is not constant,
because of daylight saving issue.

Is there any "hidden" routine can tell the correct time zone information
(cross platform, esp. open suse)

Any hints are apprecated ^^)

--Qian