[tz] Why is "AEST" the abbreviation for Australia/Sydney in 1900?

[Jonathan Wakely]

On Fri, 3 May 2024 at 23:23, brian.inglis--- via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
>
> On 2024-05-03 15:58, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > On 2024-05-03 13:33, brian.inglis--- via tz wrote:
> >> As I said, the default is for zones without rules where you could assign
> >> letters, only standard time, about 1/3 of the total, depending on what you
> >> total, to allow "%s" in the abbreviation, which would have to default to "S".
> >
> > Unfortunately I also don't understand what you're saying. Are you suggesting
> > that zic's behavior should change? or merely that zic's documentation should
> > change?
> >
> > If the former, can you give an example of how zic's behavior should differ from
> > what it's doing now? If the latter, what wording in the documentation should
> > change?
>
> I am suggesting that "%s" should be allowed in zone lines, even in zones where
> rules and letters are not used, so should default to "S" or "%z" or something.

But why?

In a zone with no rules, why would you want to use X%sX and have it
expand to XSX, when XSX is shorter and simpler to use directly? Why
would you want %s to default to %z when you could just use %z?