[tz] Definition of "timezone"

[Guy Harris]

On Dec 21, 2023, at 3:12 PM, Dale Ghent via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> Because of those innately human and arbitrary differences, I've always wondered if the TZDB should be thought of more as a "time locale database." This is borrowing a concept from the internationalization and localization (i18n, i10n) systems in computing that exist to address another innately human thing - language. I feel like use of "locale" to describe these entries in the TZDB (TLDB?) better-conveys the local and morphing nature of a given area's sense of time, kind of like how language is thought of, I guess?

As long as people realize that these locales are not equivalent to i18n/l10n locales; a given timezone (using Paul's terminology) may contain multiple i18n/l10n locales (e.g., America/Toronto has both en_CA and fr_CA locales, at minimum) and a given i18n/l10n locale may contain multiple timezones (en_US has several of them, as does pt_BR, for example).