[tz] Relation between Time Zone Abbreviation and Offset in Asia
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Mar 30 15:10:42 UTC 2021
On 3/30/21 6:26 AM, Evgheni Antropov via tz wrote:
> is it correct to use Offset instead of Abbreviation or it will be fixed in future?
The offset is intended.
I invented the abbreviation "ICT" in 1993:
https://github.com/eggert/tz/commit/61315cadc3d0e8b4ef559539502a606cf58fc0f7
Back then, POSIX required alphabetic abbreviations and I thought it
better to be consistent with POSIX so I invented abbreviations all over
the world to fill in the blanks. However, I was uncomfortable with tzdb
inventing rather than describing usage.
In 2001 POSIX was changed to allow numeric abbreviations and eventually
(in version 2017a) tzdb was changed to use numeric abbreviations instead
of the invented alphabetic ones. This change is described in the NEWS
file, and tzdb's current practice for abbreviations is described here:
https://data.iana.org/time-zones/theory.html#abbreviations
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