[tz] [PATCH 0/1] Add Asia/Beijing

Paul_Koning at Dell.com Paul_Koning at Dell.com
Mon Aug 13 20:00:33 UTC 2012


On Aug 13, 2012, at 3:49 PM, James M Leddy wrote:

> 
> I know this is a controversial topic, but I've been asked to submit
> this, and have decided to do so for a few reasons:
> 
> * We'll stop getting questions of why Beijing Time is not included.
> 
> * People that want to ship their own modified version of tzdata can
>   take this patch.
> 
> * The common proposed fix is that we should be using "human
>   presentable" names and have a mapping from these names to the
>   actual timezones. Since that proposal, indeed since the inception
>   of desktop Linux/Unix, no one (as far as I know) has actually done
>   this, leading to continued confusion from users.
> 
> * I've seen it argued that we have to keep the the database pristine,
>   yet the bar for entry does not actually seem that high.  For
>   example, we have a link from the Vatican to Rome, even though it
>   should be pretty obvious that they're the same time zone. And we
>   have a Link for people that can't seem to figure out if Nicosia is
>   in Europe or Asia.
> 
> * This really does seem to confuse users. "Eastern Time" includes
>   both Washington, D.C. and New York City. The justification is that
>   we never added Washington to the list, so we shouldn't add
>   Beijing. But this is really not a fair comparison. It's called
>   "Beijing Time". I'm sure if ET was called "Washington Time", it
>   would at least give me pause to select New York time, even though
>   I'm a New Yorker. No one gets confused that they have to pick New
>   York, or Madrid instead of Barcelona, so that argument doesn't hold
>   water.

So if we adopt this, how many thousand additional patches like this will we have to adopt as well?

	paul




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