[tz] Time zone abbreviations

Robert Elz kre at munnari.OZ.AU
Sat Sep 7 15:22:44 UTC 2019


    Date:        Sat, 7 Sep 2019 06:06:45 -0700 (PDT)
    From:        Paul Goyette <paul at whooppee.com>
    Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.4.64.1909070603320.22622 at speedy.whooppee.com>

  | The majority of these zones were changed to eliminate zone abbreviations
  | that were invented by the TZ project itself, rather than resulting from
  | any real-world usage.

That's the explanation, though since they were invented (decades ago now)
many of them became quite popular, and now have vanished.   That's a pity.

  | As I remember, ambiguity was not a factor (as
  | there are still ambiguous abbreviations today).

That's certainly correct - those things have never been useful for
anything other than comfort for humans.  Ambiguity is irrelevant
(your average person will "just know" whether an "AST" that they
see refers to North America, or the Middle East, from the context.)

kre




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