<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>> Then we should somehow try to encourage the development of new UN*X APIs
to get "long" time zone names and<br>> the deprecation of the use of the
abbreviations and the tzname[] array that points to them.<br><br></div>Early POSIX drafts referred to "time zone name;" after some effort, this was changed to "time zone name or abbreviation."<br></div>So there's standard recognition that names are distinct from abbreviations and that both can be useful.<br><br></div> @dashdashado<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:29 PM, Guy Harris <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:guy@alum.mit.edu" target="_blank">guy@alum.mit.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class=""><br>
On Apr 3, 2015, at 12:22 AM, Matt Johnson <<a href="mailto:mj1856@hotmail.com">mj1856@hotmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> Personally, I'd rather see abbreviations removed entirely. If folks want them for display, they should probably get them from CLDR, where the can be properly localized.<br>
<br>
</span>Sounds good to me, although...<br>
<span class=""><br>
> I suppose some of the historical values like those used in "war time" wouldn't be in cldr, but couldn't those be moved to a separate file?<br>
<br>
</span>...*somebody* would need to provide that file. Perhaps we could provide "fallback" abbreviations for everything, but that might not sufficiently encourage vendors of software using the tz database from using the CLDR rather than the TZ database.<br>
<br>
The CLDR is set up with "metazones"; a given tzdb zone might use multiple metazones, e.g.<br>
<br>
<timezone type="Atlantic/Azores"><br>
<usesMetazone to="1992-09-27 02:00" mzone="Azores"/><br>
<usesMetazone to="1993-03-28 01:00" from="1992-09-27 02:00" mzone="Europe_Western"/><br>
<usesMetazone from="1993-03-28 01:00" mzone="Azores"/><br>
</timezone><br>
<br>
The en.xml file in the copy of the CLDR I have says:<br>
<br>
<metazone type="Azores"><br>
<long><br>
<generic>Azores Time</generic><br>
<standard>Azores Standard Time</standard><br>
<daylight>Azores Summer Time</daylight><br>
</long><br>
</metazone><br>
<br>
so it supplies three long names - and *no* abbreviations - for the "Azores" metazone. It also supplies no abbreviations for "Europe_Western".<br>
<br>
So we might want to supply abbreviations for the benefit of software that *has* to provide them, e.g. so as not to surprise UN*X software that expects them in the output of, for example, the "date" command, and have a strong disclaimer that the abbreviations might have been made up by the tzdb maintainers and that one should *not* expect people in the locale in question to use them.<br>
<br>
Then we should somehow try to encourage the development of new UN*X APIs to get "long" time zone names and the deprecation of the use of the abbreviations and the tzname[] array that points to them.<br>
<br>
Perhaps by 2038 UN*X programs will no longer use the abbreviations. :-)</blockquote></div><br></div>