[tz] inventing zone abbreviations (was: Re: Astrakhan region got approval to change its time zone)

[Karel Volný]

Hi,

> And, yes, I am at least half serious, if not more.  Expecting 
> the tzdb maintainers to pick abbreviations for regions  from 
> which I suspect most of us don't come, and speaking languages 
> that I suspect most of us don't speak, and have them be somehow 
> appropriate is probably unwise.

I wouldn't be that pesimistic ... for example, in my country (Czech 
Republic), "CET" and "CEST" fit pretty well as we do use "středoevropský 
(letní) čas" which isn't that hard to associate and understand as it 
translates exactly as "Central European (Summer) Time"

if we are aware that Russia is used to "Москва+X", why not go with "MSK+??" 
(except for breaking backwards compatibility as different names were 
invented in the past)

if we are unaware ... well, I don't see how inventing something that could 
be understood at least in English, if not for locals, makes the situation 
any worse than using random string

sorry, I'm a bit late to the party, so I may have missed something (links 
to archives welcome), but I can't understand what problem are we trying to 
solve now? - the zone name is completely irrelevant to software, it is to 
help people, and for me (not statistically significant, right? :-)) it is 
thousands times better to read "CET" or "CEST" than "+01" and "+02" 
respectively

K.

-- 
Karel Volný
QE BaseOs/Daemons Team
Red Hat Czech, Brno
tel. +420 532294274
(RH: +420 532294111 ext. 8262074)
xmpp kavol at jabber.cz
:: "Never attribute to malice what can
::  easily be explained by stupidity."