[tz] Why did you rename Russian zone name abbreviations

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Nov 1 23:23:02 UTC 2016


On 11/01/2016 10:24 AM, Random832 wrote:
> We absolutely
> do have the resources to do the latter, you just don't*want*  to -
> that's not the same thing.

I don't want to because I don't agree that we have resources for this 
sort of thing. For example, suppose there are conflicting opinions about 
the Latin-letter abbreviation to use for the local (non-Beijing) time in 
Ürümqi, based on usage in Uyghur vs Oirat vs Mandarin vs other sources. 
In such a situation, our sources are likely to be biased for 
nontechnical reasons and we can't arbitrate such disputes reliably. It's 
too much work already to deal with English-language problems, without 
also trying to deal with obscure-to-us disputes in Xinjiang or Dagestan 
or whatever.

Applications should not care what time zone abbreviation is used in 
places like Ürümqi and Vladivostok, places where there is no real-world 
standard. Since that's the case, we should not spend much time worrying 
about it either.


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