[tz] Time zone of Iceland in Africa?

[Brian Inglis]

On 2023-11-09 20:11, Paul Eggert via tz wrote:
> On 11/9/23 15:05, Guy Harris via tz wrote:
>> Perhaps the experiment needs to wrap up and that stuff needs to be enabled, if 
>> it'll fix this.
> 
> That stuff is already enabled; see the example transcript below, which locates 
> Iceland in the Atlantic Ocean.
> 
> My guess is that the users were running an old version of tzcode, and merely 
> need to upgrade.
> 
> $ tzselect
> Please identify a location so that time zone rules can be set correctly.
> Please select a continent, ocean, "coord", "TZ", or "time".
>   1) Africa
>   2) Americas
>   3) Antarctica
>   4) Arctic Ocean
>   5) Asia
>   6) Atlantic Ocean
>   7) Australia
>   8) Europe
>   9) Indian Ocean
> 10) Pacific Ocean
> 11) coord - I want to use geographical coordinates.
> 12) TZ - I want to specify the timezone using the Posix TZ format.
> 13) time - I know local time already.
> #? 6
> Please select a country whose clocks agree with yours.
> 1) Bermuda
> 2) Cape Verde
> 3) Falkland Islands
> 4) Faroe Islands
> 5) Iceland
> 6) Portugal
> 7) South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands
> 8) Spain
> 9) St Helena
> #? 5
> 
> Based on the following information:
> 
>      Iceland
> 
> TZ='Africa/Abidjan' will be used.
> Selected time is now:    Fri Nov 10 03:08:06 GMT 2023.
> Universal Time is now:    Fri Nov 10 03:08:06 UTC 2023.
> Is the above information OK?
> 1) Yes
> 2) No
> #? 1
>  > You can make this change permanent for yourself by appending the line
>      TZ='Africa/Abidjan'; export TZ
> to the file '.profile' in your home directory; then log out and log in again.
> 
> Here is that TZ value again, this time on standard output so that you
> can use the /tmp/tz/usr/bin/tzselect command in shell scripts:
> Africa/Abidjan

While this may be technically correct, this is jarring to anyone seeing it, and 
poor UX: linking zones not in geographical proximity across continents or oceans 
should never happen e.g. {Asia,Europe}/Istanbul makes sense, Atlantic/Reykjavik 
<-> Africa/Abidjan does not.
Nobody would think these might be equivalent nor answer Yes: they would infer 
this must be an error, and it is, even if not technically!

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis              Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte                   Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter  not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer     but when there is no more to cut
                                 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry