[tz] tz abbreviations / zdump for programmers

[Petr Machata]

Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> Thanks for the email.  Some comments:
>
>> 2.2] zone.abbr.tab proposal
>
> This seems better, since the file could be maintained automatically
> from the existing data, with a new script or whatever.  I didn't
> understand this table's "localedef" column though; isn't the tz
> info independent of locale?  Or are you anticipating a future feature
> in which time zone abbreviations depend on locale?

FWIW, in Czech Republic in particular, CET is translated as "SEČ"
(středoevropský čas), CEST as "SELČ" (~ letní ~).  So apparently, these
things get translated.  So are zone identifiers: Europe/Prague, for
example, should be presented to a Czech user as "Evropa/Praha", or some
such (the slash may be understandable, but maybe it should be somehow
localized away as well).  So you do need translations of these strings.
Even to English, as a matter of fact: "Africa/Addis_Ababa" should
probably be presented as "Africa/Addis Ababa".  I think that the
situation with abbreviations is similar.

Thanks,
PM