[tz] Pre-1970 data

[Chris Walton]

My two cents:
Many of us actually work in IT and we cannot hide from the time zone names.
The use of the string "America" in Canadian time zone names has always
been a sore point for me.
I will always use Canada/Eastern over America/Toronto wherever it is
possible to do so.  It is all about National Identity and it is
something that seems to be lost on Paul and few others.
I am not asking to get rid of the "America" string in the core North
and South American times zones because it is far too late to do that.

It is not, however, too late to stop the senseless merging of time
zones across ISO boundaries. I view it as a political attack on the
National Identities of countries with small populations.  So far,
Africa, the Caribbean and Canada are getting the short end of the
stick.
I vote for #3 on Stephen's list but I would gladly settle for #2.  Is
somebody keeping track of the vote?
-chris

On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 3:02 PM Brian Park via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 11:23 AM Ken Murchison via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
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>> On 11/5/21 2:18 PM, Eliot Lear via tz wrote:
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>> Just on this point:
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>> On 05.11.21 17:42, Brian Park wrote:
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>>> Better to stick with what we have: observe what people on the ground think the time is.
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>> I've seen this a few times, but I don't understand it. No normal person on the ground thinks their time is "America/Los_Angeles". It's "US/Pacific". No normal person in Toronto thinks their time is "America/Toronto". Their country is not even America. They think their timezone is "Canada/Eastern". People are forced to use "America/Los_Angeles" or "America/Toronto" because the TZDB forced that nomenclature upon our users. It seems a mapping layer, like the 'countryzone' file containing ISO-countries, would be the one that provides the timezones that people use on the ground.
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>> Second verse, same as the first: these are database keys, not user interface presentation.  Nobody is forced to present any database key to a user.  If you have locale awareness, as most modern user-facing systems have, you're going to be far more granular anyway.
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>>
>> Couldn't agree more with Eliot.
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> The practical reality is that the TZDB identifiers are externally visible identifiers to end-users. The Unix system forces the TZDB identifiers on to the user when I have to type this:
> $ TZ=America/Toronto date
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> I agree that it is conceptually cleaner if the Core TZDB identifiers were internal only. But I understand that some people would consider ISO-country identifiers to be out of scope of this project, although there are many ad hoc ones currently in the database. I think a file like 'countryzone' should be added only if there are people willing to maintain such a list. It may need to be a separate project, to avoid forcing the TZ Coordinator to pick up the slack if those maintainers drop off.
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> Brian
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