Updated Australian time zone names/strings

[Greg Black]

Robert Elz wrote:

|   | This is a kind of chicken/egg problem: because the tzdata files
|   | don't offer AEST and friends, people have to jump through hoops
|   | to use them; most don't bother.
| 
| Back in 1993 there was almost no use of the tz database, that was still
| comparatively early in its development (the 93b set of data is the oldest
| one I have managed to save).   Before then, people set the timezone name
| in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways.

I seem to have been using it forever, but I expect you're right.

|   | Certainly, if I could have one of these to use as an alternative
|   | to "Australia/Brisbane", that would be an acceptable compromise.
| 
| When I saw ado's message, before seeing your reply, I was going to reply
| and say that I didn't think that would work for you at all - that is, your
| primary aim seemed to be to be able to sort incoming mail where the timezone
| string was "EST" and you knew it was from somewhere in Eastern Aust, rather
| than eastern north America.  To achieve that you need to somehow get other
| people to use a tz abbreviation that you like,

You're quite right -- it doesn't get me what I really want, but
I've largely given up on that now as I can see that it's not at
all likely to fly any time soon (if ever).

| creating tz db entries with
| exotic names and different abbreviations is unlikely to achieve that,
| people in Sydney are still going to pick Australia/Sydney 99 times out of
| a hundred.

True -- but if there's an alternative in the tz database that's
"better" than "Australia/Sydney", I'd be able to point to it and
suggest that people either use the alternative or, preferably,
stop using the abbreviations altogether and just use the +1000
or +1100 that we can all understand.

| For your own use there has never been a problem, you have always been able
| to alter the TZ abbreviations that you use to anything that you would like
| them to be.

I knew that.  I used to use "AEST/AEDT" on my own email, but
dropped the abbreviations a few years ago in favour of unadorned
numeric zones.  And it's not my email that's causing me grief :-)