[tz] Australian Timezone Abreviations (Daylight Savings Time) [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]
Alan Barrett
apb at cequrux.com
Sat Feb 23 09:18:27 UTC 2013
On Sat, 23 Feb 2013, Peter Stagg wrote:
> Is their anything I can do or say to bring some clarity to this
> issue and perhaps resolve it one way or another?
The tzdata project attempts to follow legislation or official
standards, where they are known, or common practice, where that is
consistent.
In the case of Australia, official standards appear to be defined
at the state level (not the Australian Commonwealth Government
level), and the relevant state legislation appears to define
phrases like "Eastern Standard Time" and "Eastern Summer Time",
not abbreviations.
Common practice in Australia appears to be inconsistent, with some
government and non-government sources using abbreviations like
"AEST" and some using abbreviations like "EST".
Given the absence of consistency in common practice, the tzdata
project has chosen to retain the status quo every time this issue
has been discussed.
It's probably worth pointing out that the status quo is consistent
with the legislation, in that the abbreviations used by the tzdata
project match the first letters of the words of the official time
zone names. For example, the legislated names "Eastern Standard
Time" and "Eastern Summer Time" are both abbreviated to "EST".
The two most likely reasons for the tzdata project to change
its Australian time zone abbreviations are:
1. If an "official" set of preferred abbreviations were set out
in a statement from a recognised national standards body, or in a
collection of statements from recognised state governments, and if
somebody notices the fact and reports it to the tzdata project.
2. If the people in Australia start being consistent in their
choice of timezone abbreviations, and if somebody notices the fact
and reports it to the tzdata project.
You may be in a position to cause some sort of official statement
to be made. You may also be in a position to cause government-related
web sites in Australia to be more consistent.
--apb (Alan Barrett)
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