[tz] [PATCH 0/2] Follow Australian common usage and update CST/CST to CST/CDT and EST/EST to EST/EDT etc [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Timothy Arceri]

From: tz-bounces at iana.org [tz-bounces at iana.org] On Behalf Of Stuart Bishop [stuart at stuartbishop.net]
Sent: Friday, 12 April 2013 11:34 PM

>On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 7:17 PM, David Patte ₯ <dpatte at relativedata.com> wrote:
>> I believe both Timothy and I prefer prefer AEST over EST, but it is a
>> different issue than the Daylight saving time ambiguity issue, so we agreed
>> that we we should probably make only the minimal changes that resolved the
>> Daylight ambiguity issue with the least changes, since it was more likely to
>> be a proposal that would be accepted into tz. We changed only the daylight
>> time abbreviations to end the ambiguity.

>I believe nearly all Australians either don't care or prefer AEST over
>EST, but understand your rationale. It solves the problems with
>systems entirely inside Australian borders. Cross border stuff will
>still need workarounds, such as international business or buggy
>software written overseas, but at least it is progress.

>> But if the tz maintainers believe that using AEST instead of EST would at
>> the same time help resolve historical ambiguities caused by older versions
>> of the tz database, I am sure we could re-roll the proposal to better suite
>> the preferences of the maintainers.

>I think a proposal for AEST would be preferable, with a fallback to
>EST, rather than attempting to divine the desires of the maintainers
>and end up with the less preferred option. Or was there an opinion I
>missed?

As David has said I and others at my organisation would much rather include the leading 'A'. But we also wanted to make sure that we at least got the daylight savings abbreviation fixed.
Australians seem to have failed time and again over the past 20 years to get this issue resolve and I had come to the conclusion that a less preferred option was better than another failure.
However some very good arguments have been raised since I've posted my patch for the inclusion of the leading 'A' if a change is to be made. I'm more than happy to create a second patch for consideration.

Timothy Arceri