[tz] Ambiguous abbreviations for Australian timezones when daylight savings is in affect

Derick Rethans tz at derickrethans.nl
Tue Apr 2 22:56:49 UTC 2013


On Tue, 2 Apr 2013, Alan Mintz wrote:

> I disagree. I think it's natural to want to abbreviate, especially 
> with things that are repeated a lot.

But that has to be done in a localized way anyway. In the Netherlands, 
nobody uses CEST or CET, but rather MEZT and MET... but the tz database 
doesn't have those either. The localization and naming is done very well 
in CLDR. I have implemented the Date/Time support (utilizing this 
database) in PHP, and have given many presentations about the subject. I 
always hammer in two things: "just" a timestamp is useless, and: never 
rely or use an abbreviation for anything. 

cheers,
Derick


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