[tz] Belarus is listed in MSK timezone
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Thu Apr 23 10:42:01 UTC 2015
Dzmitry Kazimirchyk wrote:
> I would like for the last time to kindly ask about the main reasoning behind it
To some extent I'm repeating myself, but here goes:
Although there is no widely-used English-language abbreviation for Minsk time,
the database forces us to put something there. We've used MSK for it in the
past and there hasn't been any technical problems with it, and there's not
sufficient justification to invent a new abbreviation. Among other things,
although Minsk is an unusual case, it's by no means unique: there are other
cases of multiple Zones sharing the same abbreviation and UTC offset even though
the full zone names differ (PST in Pitcairn and the US) and of a country
"stealing" a neighbor's abbreviation (AST in Iraq and Saudi Arabia).
More generally, a primary goal of the tz database is to reflect common practice,
not to invent it. For example, the next tz release is planned to change an
abbreviation used in the United States zone America/Adak, as we invented one
abbreviation (HAST) but we have since found that standard practice is to use a
different one (HST). Years ago, before I knew better, I invented a lot of
abbreviations and put them into the tz database, but that was a questionable
practice and we're better off avoiding it when we can, as is the case with both
Adak and Minsk.
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