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

Barbara Canino barbara at mabasoft.net
Tue Feb 16 11:56:56 UTC 2016


Hi,

I agree with Karel. Abbreviations (even if invented) become common use and have a meaning for people who care about them and use them.

In addition to that, I would like to point out that introducing strings like "+04", "+0400", "UTC+04", "UTC+0400" instead of abbreviations is providing information that is already available: programs can easily calculate and display any of the strings above using the GMT offsets available in tz files.

By the way, in case of Astrakhan, I would use SAMT without inventing any new abbreviation.

Barbara

On 16/feb/2016, at 10:24, Karel Volný <kvolny at redhat.com> wrote:

> 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."



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