Uncertain usage/scope of a possibly standard timezone name 'MEZ-1MSZ'

[Martin Jerabek]

On 20.10.2008 20:53, Andy Lipscomb wrote:
> That said, abbreviations of the form MEZ-1MSZ-2 or CET-1CEST you provide would refer to a time zone that never really existed--one that had used UTC/GMT plus one hour, or plus two in periods governed by current EU summer-time rules, back to the beginning of time (pun intended).
The offset in a POSIX TZ value (-1) indicates the number of hours which 
must be added to the local time to arrive at UTC. See

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/basedefs/xbd_chap08.html

Since Central European time is one (standard time) or two (daylight 
saving time) hours ahead of UTC, subtracting 1 or 2 hours is correct, so 
CET-1CEST is a correct POSIX description of the Central European time 
zone. One could also write CET-1CEST-2 but the additional one hour 
offset for daylight saving time is the default value and can be omitted.

Being from Europe/Vienna myself, I can confirm that I know MESZ 
("Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit", Central European Summer Time) but not 
MSZ. The German Wikipedia article on Summer Time 
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sommerzeit) gives MEZ ("Mitteleuropäische 
Zeit", Central European Time) as the official abbreviation for standard 
time and the following abbreviations for daylight saving time:
- MESZ: Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit
- CEST: Central European Summer Time
- CETDST: Central European Time/Daylight Saving Time

So in a nutshell I would conclude that MSZ is obviously a contraction of 
MESZ intended to mean Central European Summer Time. It is not official, 
and not prevalent at least in my region but maybe someone from Germany 
can offer more on their perspective.

Regards
Martin Jerabek