[tz] re : Time zones in Ukraine

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Sat, 19 Apr 2014 10:43:15 -0400
    From:        random832 at fastmail.us
    Message-ID:  <1397918595.3173.108174785.100A5BCD at webmail.messagingengine.com>

  | B) Zone.tab isn't relevant to those things.

Another personal observation .. I'd be quite happy to see zone.tab simply
deleted, it isn't important to the primary function of what we do, but
given that is not going to happen ...

  | The only thing zone.tab is
  | used for is configuring the timezone of a system's clock.

It is input data for tzselect, used on some (perhaps quite a few, but not
all) systems to let users select their timezone.

  | People who
  | need the historically-differing timezones _can go looking for them_,

You mean people who want to be correct, rather than simply have something
that looks OK, but is actually broken?   And you're advocating that's
what we should suggest that people use - that we should go tell average
users, who don't know better, to set their timezone incorrectly?

  | people who don't need them shouldn't have them shoved in their faces.

Everybody needs them.   The difference isn't whether they are needed
or not, but whether or not the user knows that it is needed.   And
while tzselect and zone.tab aren't exactly great on explaining to
users why they'd want Europe/Uzhgorod rather than Europe/Kiev, at
least presenting them with the option informs them hat there is
something that might not be immediately obvious going on.

If you don't think that historical data is useful, just tell the users
to set the zone to UTC+3 - which I think is correct right now.  It
will make mistakes with any timestamps from a month or so ago, but
that's just historical data, and doesn't matter, right?  In October
they can switch to UTC+2, and their clocks will remain correct...

kre