[tz] IANA timezone database - request to add Omaha, Nebraska

[Guy Harris]

On Aug 1, 2022, at 1:35 AM, Florian Weimer via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> * Paul Eggert:
> 
>> Looking back at your original question "How does this system implement
>> a programming interface that enumerates the TZ rules?" 
>> <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2022-July/031702.html> I think the
>> answer is that TZif files don't do that. That is, they don't give you 
>> access to the Rule lines, only to the effect of the Rule lines on
>> transitions and/or TZ strings.
> 
> But that means the software has to obtain the IANA time zone name

Which does not mean the software has to obtain it *directy from the end user*, or that the end user has to even know what an IANA time zone name is, much less having to specify an IANA time zone name when setting the time zone, or even be required to know that the city that happens to be used for the IANA time zone they're in happens to be {Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Berlin, Shanghai, ...}.

> (which
> is not part of the TZif data, either), and that exposes the allegedly
> invisible, internal identifier across an interface boundary.

It's "internal" in the same way that, for example, a LANG or LC_ name is "internal".  Most users of personal computers do not have to know what "en_US" or "en_CA" or "de_DE" or "de_CH" or "fr_FR" or "fr_CA" or "fr_CH" or... mean; they just specify, by name, the locale they want to be in, and the software, behind their back, arranges that the locale be set to the appropriate value.

(On my macOS Monterey VM, I printed $LANG in a Terminal window, and it was set to en_US.UTF-8.  I then changed the Region in the "Language & Region" pane of System Preferences to Switzerland and the language to Swiss French, fired up a new Terminal window, and printed $LANG = it wa fr_CH.UTF-8.  I then switched the Region back to the US and the language back to US English and fired up yet another Terminal window; it had $LANG set to en_US.UTF-8.  One of the System Preferences stuff required the user to have any clue whatsoever about the way locales are named in environment variables.)