[tz] KyivNotKiev

[Brian Inglis]

Folks,

If we are regarding these as English identifiers, we should be ignoring all 
these political arguments, and *STOP* adding alternate spellings, exccept for 
technical reasons when time zones split or combine.

Alternate spellings and scripts are localization issues that should be dealt 
with by the likes of CLDR and ICU libraries. If the characters to be used were 
not in the POSIX base character set, we would have no hesitation just saying 
*NO*; we should have no hesitation just saying *NO* to political arguments! 
Whether there are more occurrences on more sites should have no relevance once 
the identifier has been assigned, just as other location selection criteria such 
as population are considered irrelevant once an identifier has been assigned.

We have dropped posixrules and eliminated many other legacy rules and zones, we 
should in the course of time, eliminate all the alternate spellings, keeping 
only the base zone identifiers.

Otherwise we appear to have given up any basis for resisting these political 
complaints and we should just add a link anytime anyone has any political 
objection to how we identify it.
If this change is made, I would promptly expect growing demands for more 
political changes, as we have been shown to waver in the face of political 
demands unrelated to technical issues.
There will be more demands to change or add official or remove unofficial zone 
identifiers on political bases.

And for most English speakers the locations under discussion will for decades 
continue to be referred to as Ukraine, Crimea, Sebastopol, Kiev, etc. regardless 
of what the locals want to call it or have others call it.
Few English speakers will recognize or assign any meaning to new names, unless 
both appear together regularly with explanations on common social and tabloid 
media web sites, which is unlikely as it not click bait.
Those sites will continue to use the old spellings, as their primary focus is 
getting their readers attention, with words they recognize and could use.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada


On 2020-11-28 11:38, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 11/27/20 9:54 AM, Matt Johnson-Pint wrote:
> 
>> how hard is it to add a link? ...  We wouldn't even have to make the Kyiv 
>> spelling primary.
> 
> This sounds like a good suggestion. We could add a link line as in the patch 
> below. This would be a test of the new feature of *forward* compatibility, not 
> *backward* compatibility, but it's pretty much the same thing as far as the 
> implementation goes so I'm not sure it's worth the hassle of creating a new 
> 'forward' file. Now that FreeBSD uses 'backward' along with everybody else, 
> putting this line in 'backward' means it should be supported by everybody who 
> cares about alternate names.
> 
> I had already been meaning to move some other links to 'backward' for similar 
> reasons, but I figure we might as well do the tougher case first.
> 
> I have not committed this patch, as the area is controversial.
> 
> diff --git a/backward b/backward
> index e13ae52..3327e58 100644
> --- a/backward
> +++ b/backward
> @@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
> -# tzdb links for backward compatibility
> +# tzdb links for backward and forward compatibility
> 
> 
>   # This file is in the public domain, so clarified as of
>   # 2009-05-17 by Arthur David Olson.
> 
> 
> -# This file provides links between current names for timezones
> +# This section provides links between current names for timezones
>   # and their old names.  Many names changed in late 1993.
> 
> 
>   # Link TARGET                  LINK-NAME
> @@ -130,3 +130,9 @@ Link        Etc/UTC                 UTC
>   Link   Etc/UTC                 Universal
>   Link   Europe/Moscow           W-SU
>   Link   Etc/UTC                 Zulu
> +
> +
> +# This section is for forward compatibility, where the primary name is
> +# likely to change if current trends in common English usage continue.
> +
> +Link   Europe/Kiev             Europe/Kyiv