Confusing Etc/GMT

Paul Eggert eggert at CS.UCLA.EDU
Tue Mar 29 07:55:32 UTC 2005


> From: Scheffenegger, Richard [mailto:rs at netapp.com] 
> Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 1:06 AM

> While the Etc/GMT names might be POSIX style, it is very confusing to a lot
> of people, when CET is suddenly not GMT+1 but Etc/GMT-1.
>
> Perhaps you can check in those lines to the Etcetera File so that people
> eventually try UTC with the Correct offset?

Having Etc/UTC+14 mean the opposite of Etc/GMT-14 would probably cause
more confusion than it would cure.  Even your patch was confused to
some extent, since, for example:

> Zone	Etc/UTC-14	-14	-	UTC-14	# 14 hours ahead of UTC

has a comment that is wrong, and the Zone line posits a time zone 14
hours behind UTC, which is something that has no practical use nowadays.

I'd be more inclined to move the confusing Etc/... entries to "backwards".
(After all, they are backwards from the normal convention.  :-)



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