[tz] User time zones

[Steven Abner]

On Dec 8, 2011, at 10:14 AM, Zefram wrote:

> GMT is not at all exceptional in the relevant respect, of referring to
> a specific offset rather than to a civil timezone.  MST (aside from a
> Moscow-based interpretation) refers specifically to UT-7h, not to the
> dance that clocks perform in Denver.  Likewise, MDT refers specifically
> to UT-6h.
> 
> To accurately represent GMT and BST (as used in the UK) and MST and
> MDT (as used in north America) in the timezone database, you'd need
> essentially:
> 
> Zone    GMT               0:00  -       GMT
> Zone    BST               1:00  -       BST
> Zone    MST              -7:00  -       MST
> Zone    MDT              -6:00  -       MDT
> 
> and similarly for rather a lot of the other abbreviations.  (It so happens
> that two of these four hypothetical zones are already in the database
> (GMT and MST), but that's unusual among the abbreviations.)
> 
> If you don't do this, but instead have just links such as BST ->
> Europe/London, then at best it's still necessary to search within
> the timezone data to find out what the abbreviation means.  That's
> not actually representing the abbreviation's meaning; it's a bad
> implementation of the hypothetical abbreviation-to-candidate-zone
> index.  (Bad largely because it can only show one candidate zone per
> abbreviation.)

Dang, I think that would be a much better solution, for me. It would decrease access
time of information retrieval, if I get it right.  I will research as a possible solution, for me.
Thank you!

The information I provided should not be considered an authoritative work.
I am a peon in the grand scheme, and provided in hope that it may be of some use.
I am not even in a position to take a position on adding data to the database.

Steve
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