[tz] [PATCH] Change abbreviation of Sri Lanka standard time to SLST

[Karel Volný]

Hi,

Dne středa 19. října 2016 9:41:50 CEST, Guy Harris  napsal(a):
> If your country is not English-speaking, your software vendor 
> should be providing their own translations of time zone 
> abbreviations or using the Unicode CLDR for translated 
> abbreviations.

btw, why should this be done just for non-English-speaking?

> It's not the job of the tzdb maintainers to 
> provide non-English-language abbreviations; see, for example:
>
> 	$ TZ=Europe/Berlin date
> 	Wed Oct 19 09:39:49 CEST 2016
>
> Note that "CEST" ends with "T", not "Z".

I'm afraid you're missing the point here (if I got Pavel right, the next 
answer doesn't shed much light even) - the problem is that tzdb maintainers 
refuse to provide *English* abbreviations for non-E countries

ah, okay, scratch that, there's new reply now:

> > Then tzdb should not provide abbreviations at all.
> Ideally, no, it shouldn't; as far as I'm concerned,
...

the problem is, as far as _other_ people are concerned, they find the 
classical abbreviations useful

I did a small survey and I haven't found any supporters of numerical 
abbreviations among my colleagues - well, that's statistically 
insignificant of course, but I would consider it a thing to think about, if 
the only supporters can be found on this list

and even on this list, the idea received serious backlash, as we can 
experience right now 

I feel sorry for users in Yakutsk[*], for example, who recently got their 
zone abbreviation changed from YAKT to +09

I believe vitually everyone in Russia able to read Latin could understand 
what YAKT means

now with +09, well, I haven't done local survey, but still I believe the 
users can be pretty confused whether that means "ninth time zone" or 
"MSK+09" or what ... there are not many ordinary people familiar with UTC 
so that the correct "UTC+09" would come into their minds at the first try - 
the same, as there are not many people following tzdb development/reading 
full docs to know the correct meaning, they just want to use it, not to 
study it ...

also, from my POV it is very bad that the change was done in a way that it 
applies even for older timestamps (recently mentioned as a regression in 
php testsuite), and on old systems that are unlikely to get any noncritical 
updates, leaving them with unpatched glibc, now suddenly complaining about 
the "+" sign etc.

K.

[*] 
http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/30/by_type/timezones.russia.html#Yakutsk

-- 
Karel Volný
BaseOS QE - Daemons
Red Hat Czech, Brno
tel. +420 532294274
(RH: +420 532294111 ext. 8262074)
:: "Never attribute to malice what can
::  easily be explained by stupidity."