[tz] Introduce Etc/UTC+x timezones?

Benjamin Drung benjamin.drung at canonical.com
Tue May 2 15:19:06 UTC 2023


On Tue, 2023-05-02 at 14:49 +0000, Doug Ewell wrote:
> Benjamin Drung wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for all the feedback - especially the history lesson about GMT
> > vs. UTC. As result I will just clarify the difference between GMT and
> > UTC offsets in the Debian/Ubuntu package.
> 
> Crucially, the difference we have been talking about is not between
> “GMT offsets” and “UTC offsets” per se, or between GMT and UTC
> themselves. It is between two notational conventions, one which
> assigns positive values to time zones west of the prime meridian and
> another which assigns negative values to them.
> 
> There is history behind each of these competing decisions, but this is
> not a matter of “GMT vs. UTC,” and users who understand the actual
> relationship between GMT and UTC will only be confused by such a
> statement.

Help on wording will be highly appreciated. Currently debconf will ask
"Please select the city or region corresponding to your time zone. Time
zone: GMT, GMT+0, GMT+1, ..., GMT-9, Greenwich, UCT, UTC, Universal,
Zulu".

Draft: "Please select the offset corresponding to your time zone.
Contrary to UTC, positive values to GMT refer to zones west to Greenwich
and negative values to east to Greenwich (e.g. UTC-6 = GMT+6). Time
zone: GMT, GMT+0, GMT+1, ..., GMT-9, Greenwich, UCT, UTC, Universal,
Zulu".

-- 
Benjamin Drung
Debian & Ubuntu Developer


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