Timezone naming (CET)

[Markus G. Kuhn]

In message <199612271001.LAA05390 at uriah.heep.sax.de>, J Wunsch wrote:

> As Janis.Papanagnou at PC-Plus.DE wrote:
> 
> > Markus wrote:
> 
> > > Consequently: Only humans have to recognize the time zone abbreviation
> > > and it definitely does not make sense here to use one that does not
> > > follow common practice (Langenscheid, PTB, SkyTV, CNN, etc.).
> > 
> > That's the point, humans should be provided a user-friendly naming scheme.
> > But I cannot second your conclusions.  The US time zone "names" are very
> > strange (to me!), but I don't care - it's not my domain, I have not to use
> > them.  CNN, etc. is not what I would call common practice; in DE I hear
> > the terms MEZ (or MET).  I am not talking with the PTB, nor do I inform
> > myself by US broadcasts.

Well, CNN International as broadcasted in Europe is produced in London, and
BSkyB (which uses "CET" very widely on its teletext program plans) is
as the name suggest BRITISH Sky Broadcasting, so my quoted sources are
very European. [And if you do not talk to PTB, then where do you eventually 
get your time from?]

> Hah!  You thought i already gave up?  No, only deferred...

Same here ... ;-)

> About a month ago, i started a small vote in de.comp.os.unix, that is
> the projected target people that will be most affected by your
> decision. (Btw., Markus later sent a followup letter there, and got
> one very interesting (from my point of view :) followup today, so
> people understanding German might want to read it there.)

Unfortunately, your ballot deadline ended before I was able to post my
summary of the previous comp.std.internat and tz discussion there, so
I did already expect that the "I have always seen MET since I know Unix,
so it must be correct" opinion will dominate there. In fact, this was
my own opinion before I started to look into this during this discussion.
I would have liked to encourage people to look at least once into their 
English dictionaries before they vote.  Therefore, I do not consider your 
ballot of very much value, as the discussion in de.comp.os.unix prior to it 
provided almost no background information compared to the June/July 1996 
discussion in comp.std.internat and de.comp.standards. Thanks for the work, 
but please consider the result with a grain of salt.

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
University, Indiana, USA -- email: kuhn at cs.purdue.edu