[tz] Rename Ukrainian cities to their official transliterated names

Michael Douglass mikeadouglass at gmail.com
Thu Oct 4 17:42:21 UTC 2018


I suggested a completely backward compatible approach.

Downstream consumers can have a form of the data that looks as it does now.

The argument we are supposedly trying to make is that NOBODY should be 
presenting these names to users - they should be using the tzid as a key 
to a localized lookup so UI wise there's no difference. I don't think we 
can use 'misuse' of those names as a reason not to change.

There is also the point that some are reluctant to use the Olson data at 
least because it's tied to politically sensitive names. Having the 
originators maintain a UID at least satisfies that problem.


On 10/4/18 13:02, Fred Gleason wrote:
> On Oct 4, 2018, at 12:35, John Haxby <john.haxby at oracle.com 
> <mailto:john.haxby at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>> I think, even so, this will not fix the problem.  Instead of 
>> complaining about the Europe/Kiev name, they'll be complaining about 
>> the spelling of the mapping from an opaque identifier to Europe/Kiev.
>
> Exactly. At *some* point in the chain, these zones need to get turned 
> into geographical names that people can recognize. In some regions, 
> that naming process is fraught with dispute and emotion; 
> unfortunately, due to the very nature of what tzdb is and does, we are 
> never going to be free from that aspect. Thus, changing the current 
> identifiers would merely add confusion for users and complexity to the 
> code without addressing the essence of the issue.
Yes - these discussions are always fraught with dispute and emotion.

The point here is to distance this group that maintains the zone data 
from some other group that does localization. With a little care most 
consumers of the data won't see the difference.

>
> That cartoon from Xkcd posted here last week [https://xkcd.com/2050/] 
> somehow feels relevant…  :)
I think that cartoon identifies the type of discussion that SHOULD take 
place in this group.
>
> Cheers!
>
>
> |----------------------------------------------------------------------|
> | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. |              Chief Developer         |
> |                           |              Paravel Systems         |
> |----------------------------------------------------------------------|
> |         A room without books is like a body without a soul.         |
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