[tz] EU Public Consultation on summertime arrangements

[John Wilcock]

Le 11/07/2018 à 14:39, Robert Elz a écrit :
> TZ doesn't care really, so that's not an issue.
> 
> However there is lots of other code which believes it sane to
> parse the zone acronym and draw conclusions from it (that is,
> if "CET" appears, it must mean UTC+01 and if CEST is there,
> it must mean UTC+02).   That's horribly unreliable, and should
> be squashed.    But it is more widespread than you'd think.

No doubt - but I would venture to suggest that this is comparable to 
pre-Y2K code that believed two-digit years were sane! Thankfully, code 
that used such logic was indeed squashed when the assumption was proven 
invalid :-)

The existence of such code is not a sound basis, IMO, for adding a 
recommendation to refrain from changing the meaning of the current 
abbreviations (though admittedly it can do no harm to point out that 
such code does exist).

One might even hope that a change of this nature affecting a major world 
region such as the EU would result in a Y2K-like trigger to clean up 
code that handles time zones...
-- 
John