[tz] KyivNotKiev

David Patte dpatte at relativedata.com
Thu Nov 26 12:06:13 UTC 2020


A thought came to mind after reading similar emails for a few years. 
Perhaps a minor change should be made to the spec. Perhaps it should say 
that the zone 'tag' is the 'tag' given to the zone 'as would be in 
common usage in American English in 1980'. The last portion will ensure 
that newer spellings in English should no longer be expected to be 
supported.


On 2020-11-26 06:57, Lester Caine wrote
> Stop using timezone id tags as if they are names to be displayed to 
> third party users. The chicken and egg problem that has to be fixed is 
> that the id tags are ONLY intended to be used to access the data and 
> other databases use that tag to call up timezone rules but any display 
> to the end user SHOULD be provided WITHOUT reference to the id tags. 
> It is now getting to the point when perhaps the request to strip all 
> 'english' tags and replace them with numeric id's, but that is an even 
> bigger BC break than simply using old established keys internally in 
> the TZ database!
>
> While software programs cut corners by using the internal id tags as 
> if they are accurate location information we will have this continuous 
> request to keep changing names that SHOULD be handled at the client 
> interface level.
>



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