[tz] Why did you rename Russian zone name abbreviations

[Paul Eggert]

On 11/03/2016 09:39 AM, Robert Elz wrote:
> When I get to watch live US
> sport, there are frequently (useless to me) ads for following programs,
> which are typically stated as to start at (something like) 9 ET / 8 CT

Good point, and I imagine that Australian sports broadcasts do something 
similar. However, abbreviations like "ET" would have introduced 
ambiguity in the original 7th Edition Unix implementation that inspired 
tzdata, and I expect such abbreviations were avoided in Unix for that 
reason.

tzdata has kept to the Unix tradition in its abbreviations. I just now 
looked for counterexamples, and all I found were typos in old 
Palestinian time stamps, which I will send out a proposed patch shortly for.

> best would be to delete all the abbreviations

Sometimes I'm tempted to do that. There's quite a bit of practice dating 
back to the 1970s, though, and we're having plenty of trouble deleting 
just the invented abbreviations which are considerably more recent. 
Perhaps my successor can take on the larger task....