[tz] [PATCH 1/1] Add UTC to zone tables

[Guy Harris]

On Mar 12, 2016, at 5:02 PM, J William Piggott <elseifthen at gmx.com> wrote:

> The consensus seems to be, the UTC index card cannot be placed in the
> zone.tab drawer. It must go in a separate drawer all by itself, because
> it has no geographic identity.

Exactly.

> Civil agreements to use UTC as a 'universal' reference so that globally
> connected systems can function efficiently does not nullify the
> geographic origin of UTC.
> 
> A geographical model with time zones defined as offsets from UTC
> requires UTC to have a geographic origin.

However, UTC isn't a time zone, so no such requirement exists.  It's what you use when you need a time stamp that's the same in all time zones.

> When tzselect is run the first choices are:
> 
> Please select a continent, ocean, "coord", or "TZ".
> 1) Africa
> 2) Americas
> 3) Antarctica
> 4) Asia
> 5) Atlantic Ocean
> 6) Australia
> 7) Europe
> 8) Indian Ocean
> 9) Pacific Ocean
> 10) coord - I want to use geographical coordinates.
> 11) TZ - I want to specify the time zone using the Posix TZ format.

Then it should be fixed to offer:

Please select a continent, ocean, "coord", "UTC", or "TZ".
1) Africa
2) Americas
3) Antarctica
4) Asia
5) Atlantic Ocean
6) Australia
7) Europe
8) Indian Ocean
9) Pacific Ocean
10) coord - I want to use geographical coordinates.
11) UTC - I want to specify the use of Coordinated Universal Time.
12) TZ - I want to specify the time zone using the Posix TZ format.