Information wanted #1: time zone names in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine

[John Haxby]

On 27/09/11 12:35, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> Robert Elz said:
>> > What we should really be doing is making it clear to one and all that
>> > these abbreviations are meaningless, rather than FET or EEFT or BYT or
>> > anything else, call all the Russian (and related) zones "EST" (they're
>> > Eastern, with respect to most of Europe anyway, and they have a standard
>> > time), for no better reason than to make it clear to everyone that the
>> > abbreviations have no practical purpose, and are better never used, anywhere.
> Very true.
>
> Perhaps we should use "NSA", for "No Standard Abbreviation", for these
> cases.

That would be unfortunate as the standard Posix date format includes the
alphabetic timezone abbreviate does it not?

Would it not be better to use the offset as the abbreviation when there
isn't a suitable abbreviation?

jch