[tz] tzdb timezone names/identifiers and links

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Fri Mar 1 18:39:22 UTC 2019


On 3/1/19 3:05 AM, Guy Harris wrote:
> if a user really wants to know what time zone rules are being invoked at the current location, we need a way to describe them that wouldn't be meaningless noise to a user, e.g.
>
> 	{name} summer time rules
>
> with {name} being the name of an appropriate region - probably including the country you're currently in, but that isn't sufficient in many cases - and "summer time rules" appropriately localized, e.g. "Daylight Saving Time rules" in the US.

If this descriptive string is intended to summarize a tzdb Zone without
giving full details, then zone1970.tab is one attempt to do that. For
example, for Asia/Bangkok it gives "Indochina (most areas)", and for
Europe/Berlin it gives "Germany (most areas)".

As you mention, a string that fully described a Zone would contain so
much detail that users would be overwhelmed. So there's a judgment call
as to how much detail to put into the string. zone1970.tab's strings
currently do not contain substrings like "summer time rules", partly to
avoid churn (for example, we won't have to change zone1970.tab merely if
Germany cancels DST) and partly because I thought the detail to be
overkill for many users.

CLDR and/or other groups that localize zone1970.tab (or its equivalent)
might find it useful to put more detail into their strings, depending on
the circumstances.



More information about the tz mailing list