[tz] Zone name policy

[Guy Harris]

On Dec 1, 2016, at 1:07 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 12/01/2016 12:44 PM, Maksym Besida wrote:
>> TZ files are changed frequently because a country can pass a law
> 
> Sure, and that's because people change their clocks, which is the tz database subject matter. As much as possible we want to focus on the subject matter, and not be distracted by non-timekeeping issues such as whether a city's name should be "Jerusalem" or "al-Quds". We can't resolve political issues like that and we should not waste time trying.
> 
>> When you're mentioning a user, could you please specify who do you mean?
> End users set their time zone on their cell phone or laptop or desktop or whatever, and their user interfaces should display translated names.

And that's "translated names of appropriate cities, even if they're not used as the cities in tzdb names".

I.e., time zone selector programs should ***NOT*** ever show users tzdb names.

(It would have been nice if there had been some form of ID that we could have used for tzdb zones that *didn't* involve city names, given all the opportunities for complaints that using city names has given.)