[tz] Idea for internationalized time point unique time zone abbreviations

[Ian Abbott]

On 2012-06-06 17:26, Boruch Baum wrote:
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> On 06/06/2012 11:56 AM, Ian Abbott wrote:
>> Even worse, the user can change the abbreviations to anything she
>> likes by setting the TZ environment variable and calling tzset().
>> How would _that_ get localized?
>
> If I understand your case correctly, that wouldn't need to be
> localized in any special way. Should the infallible user set TZ to a
> zone for which no tzif exists, the system should functionally ignore
> it, because it has no tzif to turn to for data.
>
> If you mean that the user was sufficiently sophisticated to first go
> to the trouble of compiling a custom timezone using 'zic', and then
> set the TZ, then I'd feel comfortable imposing upon that user the
> burden of likewise modifying and recompiling the locale definition file.
>
> Am I on track?

Well she might expect the abbreviations in the TZ environment variable 
to be used without localization, in which case there would need to be a 
hidden flag in the global variables (and the struct tm for the 
re-entrant variants of various time-related functions) to say if the 
time-zone abbreviations are allowed to be localized.

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-=( Ian Abbott @ MEV Ltd.    E-mail: <abbotti at mev.co.uk>        )=-
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