[tz] Please Don't Feed the Trolls (was Kyiv not Kiev)

Guy Harris gharris at sonic.net
Thu Jun 30 17:50:44 UTC 2022



> On Jun 30, 2022, at 6:52 AM, Randal L. Schwartz via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:
> 
>>>>>> "Eliot" == Eliot Lear via tz <tz at iana.org> writes:
> 
> Eliot> The difference between the two has been explained on the
> Eliot> list. Please read and internalize that explanation.  In the
> Eliot> meantime, have you reviewed what the OSes actually present as the
> Eliot> TZ name? I note that MacOS presents both.
> 
> I just experimented, and apparently, MacOS no longer accepts Kiev, only
> Kyiv.  Score one for the petitioners. :)

On the other hand:

macOS 13.0 beta 2:

	$ ls -1 /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/K*
	/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Kaliningrad
	/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Kiev
	/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Kirov
	$ 

However, in the "Date & Time" part of System Settings (the shiny new "let's make it more like iOS" name for the setting);

	1) it recognizes "Kyiv" as a city, even though that's not in the /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe directory;

	2) it does not recognize "Kiev" as a city, even though that *is* in the /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe directory;

	3) it recognizes "Kharkiv" as a city, even though that's not in the /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe directory;

so the list of cities supported by the "Closest city" picker in "Date & Time" in macOS is *not* based on the contents of /usr/share/zoneinfo in macOS.

(Either you're using a macOS 13 beta or you're using macOS 12.4; my Monterey VM is currently running 12.3.1, and it accepts both "Kyiv" and "Kiev" in its time zone city chooser.  It's currently downloading the 12.4 update.)

I didn't try setting either of them to Russian as the system language; I suspect the city chooser would accept Киев when the system language is Russian.

(I.e., what the closest city chooser accepts is not just a list of path names underneath /usr/share/zoneinfo, and it's probably not even based on what path names exist there - there's probably lists of cities in various languages, with maps from those city names to tzdb regions.

THAT IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG.  MOST TIME ZONE CHOOSERS SHOULD WORK THAT WAY.)


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