<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Slightly outside the box: for long-ago times, "LMT" is used to cover a multitude of cases; "LST" (Local Standard Time) (in some cases, in conjunction with "LDT") could used for all those (new) cases where an abbreviation isn't known. (Alternately, just "LOCAL"could be used rather than "LST" and "LDT", avoiding a conflict with Latvian Standard Time.)<br></div><br></div> @dashdashado<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 9:48 PM, Russ Allbery <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:eagle@eyrie.org" target="_blank">eagle@eyrie.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">Paul Goyette <<a href="mailto:paul@whooppee.com">paul@whooppee.com</a>> writes:<br>
> On Sun, 14 Feb 2016, Paul Eggert wrote:<br>
<br>
>> The attached additional patch would change the new zone to use "+0400"<br>
>> rather than "+04". Still, I mildly prefer "+04", as it's briefer. No<br>
>> matter what we switch to, we will confuse some people; and other things<br>
>> being roughly equal, briefer is better.<br>
<br>
> Perhaps briefer is better. But if this is a "trial run" for moving into<br>
> the future, where we can reasonably expect partial hour offsets, we should<br>
> go ahead with the +0400 variant. At least this way, there'll be only one<br>
> new variant for people to absorb!<br>
<br>
> Just my PHP 1 (approx. USD 0.02) worth of opinion!<br>
<br>
</span>Yeah, that's my personal leaning as well. Another useful principle along<br>
the lines of "briefer is better" is "don't invent new notation if one can<br>
avoid it." Using the existing ISO 8601 time zone notation for the time<br>
zone abbreviation has a lot of merit under that principle. Anyone<br>
familiar with ISO 8601 or RFC 822 syntax will immediately find it<br>
familiar.<br>
<br>
(It's worth noting that +04 is also valid ISO 8601, which weakens this<br>
argument, but my sense is that it's much less common to use the two-digit<br>
form in day-to-day use of ISO 8601, and it's intended to indicate lower<br>
precision. ISO 8601 allows a lot of abbreviated forms that, in practice,<br>
one usually doesn't use because they just add confusion without serving<br>
much purpose.)<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Russ Allbery (<a href="mailto:eagle@eyrie.org">eagle@eyrie.org</a>) <<a href="http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/</a>><br>
</font></span></blockquote></div><br></div>