[tz] Timezone error (Kyiv not Kiev)

Guy Harris gharris at sonic.net
Tue Jul 5 23:40:14 UTC 2022


On Jul 5, 2022, at 4:00 PM, Stephen Trainor (Crookneck) <stephen at crookneckconsulting.com> wrote:

> I don’t disagree with any of that. However, there are plenty of use cases where you care about the time zone:
> 
> - in a place other than your device's current location
> - where your planned location doesn’t have a good name (e.g. a wilderness area)
> - and want to be certain which rules are being applied (e.g. Page, AZ and surrounding area), i.e. call it whatever hyperlocal name you want, but I still need to know which TZ rules you're applying (and the TZID is the best proxy, as opposed to trying to read the actual rules).

(I presume the items in that list are separated by "and" rather than "or".)

The TZID may be a good proxy for people who are familiar with TZIDs.  It might not be for others, e.g. if you're somewhere within the Navajo Nation, a TZID of America/Denver might come as a surprise.  "Mountain Time", or "US Mountain Time", might make more sense; in that particular use case, historical time zones are unlikely to be relevant (I'm assuming "planned" here refers to planned time in the future spent at that location, so what that location did for 2 years back in the late 1940's isn't relevant), so a name that currently applies to multiple TZIDs, due to past weirdness and present not-so-weirdness, might make more sense.


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