[tz] Non-ASCII outside comments?

[Paul Eggert]

Arthur David Olson wrote:
> Should zic permit non-ASCII characters in zone names? In time zone
> abbreviations?
> If they are permitted, should zic warn about them?

Currently zic allows non-ASCII characters in both places, no?  Or more 
precisely, zic allows any byte except for ", newline, and the null byte. 
  So the question is whether zic should stop allowing nearly-arbitrary 
byte strings, even byte strings that are not properly encoded characters.

The simplest thing to do is to leave zic alone.  I don't see much harm 
in that, though perhaps I'm missing something.

PS to others: This is not a question about the tz database, as it will 
stick to a small subset of ASCII characters in zone names, as documented 
in "Theory".  It's a question about what happens when people use 'zic' 
privately on their own databases.