What is a time zone?

[Syed Sajjath]

You are correct, we do offer two timezones EST(no daylight Savings) and
EST(with daylight Saving) in Australia for the user to select.

Sometimes, users schecule conference in another timezone, and we cannot
always depend on the users to know the current time at that location .  For
example, a user flying to the United states may request a conference to be
scheduled in US Central Time (while he is still in Australia), and has no
knowledge of what the local time in US Central time(he will eventually when
he lands there), or is Daylight Savings in effect or not.  All he will say
is, I request a conference call on Feb, 21, 2001 at 10:00 am in US Central
time.

There is a problem when within a country, there are differrent
interpretations of the timezone abbreviations (these are very few, I think
Australia is the only place).  In the tz list, there are representatives
from many countries, and people knowledgeble of local traditions.  Their
inputs would be very valuable in setting up a list of timezone abbreviations
and names, known and used locally.

Please forgive me if my arguments are not coherent / clear.  But I hope you
get the gist of my request.  I am sure it would be valuable to lot of tzdata
users.  For now, I would like to know how many are interested.  If the tz
list does not want to be filled with responses, you can just reply to me and
I will summarize it for the list.  So far, I have got response from Thomas
Carey, who is also interested in such a file.

Regards,
-Syed

-----Original Message-----
From:	Eric Ulevik [mailto:eau at ozemail.com.au]
Sent:	Tuesday, February 13, 2001 4:03 PM
To:	Syed.Sajjath at wcom.com; 'Gwillim Law'; tz at elsie.nci.nih.gov
Subject:	Re: What is a time zone?

> if an Australian user asks for 10:00 am EST, we know it is australian
time,
> not US.  Whether it is Standart or Summer we calculate based on the
> scheduled time(our assumption is user just wants the conference at that
> local time).

Of course, this isn't enough. Right now, in Sydney EST means Eastern Summer
Time and in Brisbane EST means Eastern Standard Time.

A simple solution to scheduling in the near future would be to determine the
current difference between UTC and the user's local time. The comprehensive
solution requires the user to specify their location.

Regards,

Eric Ulevik