[tz] Fw: Asia/Jakarta timezone acronym is misleading [RECAP]

[Benny]

Sorry if this topic has been discussed many times before:

[1] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2002-February/011863.html Indonesia time zones

[2] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2002-March/011897.html indonesia time zone correction
[3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.glibc/8955/focus=283
[4] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2008-November/015288.html Incorrect time zone abbreviations for Indonesia
[5] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2009-April/015565.html Jakarta is Indonesia West Time Not Central Time

[6] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2009-May/015626.html
[7] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2009-May/015627.html
[8] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2009-May/015628.html
[9] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2009-May/015629.html
[10] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2009-May/015633.html

and elsewhere

Arthur David Olson[6] commented:

The challenge here is that abbreviations of English-language names are
used consistently for time zones around the globe.
For Indonesia we have abbreviations WIT (Western Indonesian Time), CIT
(Central Indonesian Time), and EIT (Eastern Indonesian Time).
Improvidently, one of these English-language abbreviations (WIT) is also
the native-language abbreviation of a different time zone.

There's been discussion on the mailing list in the past about
abbreviations; past consensus was that producing native-language
abbreviations was an internationalization matter rather than a time zone
matter.

A case could be made for translating the native time zone names  (Waktu
Indonesia Barat, Waktu Indonesia Tengah, and Waktu Indonesia Timur) into
English and using abbreviations based on the translated names.
While I understand the need for English abbreviation, but in Indonesian case, it's misleading and thus have an undesirable effect, that is confusing to some people that's not aware that the acronym is in English. As for the Indonesian acronym, I think there's no question anymore about its validity (attested by http://time.kim.lipi.go.id/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indonesia, and others)

As for the English names, I propose they're changed into Western Time of Indonesia (WTI), Central Time of Indonesia (CTI), Eastern Time of Indonesia (CTI). According to http://www.statoids.com/tid.html the English equivalent (translation) are: Western Indonesia Standard Time (WIST), Central Indonesia Standard Time (CIST), Eastern Indonesia Standard Time (EIST). Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indonesia#Historical_usage) noted on the history of [[Time in Indonesia]]:
 Jakarta Standard Time (JST), Bali Standard Time (BST), Jayapura Time (JT) respectively.

Tim Diggins[8] asked and replied by Robert Elz[9]:

| Maybe I'm missing something - can someone explain what the   | abbreviations are used for They're just part of the standard output data that the ctime()
related functions are expected to provide. As you noted, the abbreviations themselves are essentially useless,
and applications using them for any more than decoration are generally
broken, but what applications decide to do is outside our control.
A TZ abbreviation has been available from libc essentially forever,
and we need to keep on providing one. But in our case with Wikipedia, it's not just for decoration purposes. As you might already know, Wikipedia translated the interface into many languages, and in the case of Indonesian Wikipedias (there are many editions of them), the discussion in article talk pages and user talk pages are done by people who left their signatures (name and timestamp), which carries the aforementioned "WIT", and has led to some unexplained confusion. Therefore we're asking it to be changed if possible.


___________________

Regards,
benny


________________________________
 From: Benny <bknliem at yahoo.com>
To: "tz at iana.org" <tz at iana.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 9:17 PM
Subject: [tz] Asia/Jakarta timezone acronym is misleading
 

The acronym used in Asia/Jakarta timezone is WIT (Western Indonesian Time), where in Indonesian language, WIT means Waktu Indonesia Timur (Eastern Indonesian Time), so it's rather confusing, especially if the conversation (say in Indonesian Wikipedia) is done in Indonesian language, and the user add a signature with the timemark, it will assume WIT is the Indonesian abbreviation, which is of course not. 


Noted in: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44758    
First noted in: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=791 (2005)

 
___________________

Regards,
benny
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