[tz] Belarus is listed in MSK timezone

Dzmitry Kazimirchyk dkazimirchyk at gmail.com
Fri Apr 3 23:20:53 UTC 2015


On 04/04/2015 01:03 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
>
> The situation with MSK is not unprecedented.  For example, in the tz
> database PST stands for "Pacific Standard Time" in the United States,
> and for "Pitcairn Standard Time" in Pitcairn, and corresponds to UTC-8
> in both countries.  This is entirely analogous to MSK standing for
> "Moscow time" in Russia and for "Minsk time" in Belarus and
> corresponding to UTC+3 in both countries.  For timekeeping purposes it's
> often a bit simpler to use the same abbreviation for the same UTC offset
> even if the abbreviation is ambiguous, and this hasn't been a
> significant technical problem in practice.

I don't believe that MSK situation is similar to PST since I can see 
both Pacific Standard Time and Pitcairn Standard Time in the list here:

http://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/

meaning that they both are publicly known. But I fail to see MSK there 
or somewhere else (even in the TZ database itself) mentioned as "Minsk 
time" at all. And I will repeat that due to the aforementioned reasons 
by using MSK TZ database imposes the term of "Moscow time" to describe 
time in Belarus which wouldn't take place otherwise.

I also urge you not to downplay the role of time zone abbreviations in 
the TZ database, due to their vast usage in software in general and in 
particular to display formatted dates.


--
Dzmitry Kazimirchyk


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