[tz] Timezone selectors (was RES: Timezone for Brazil)

[Guy Harris]

On Oct 10, 2023, at 3:48 PM, Doug Ewell <doug at ewellic.org> wrote:

> Guy Harris wrote:
> 
>> Most users should never be exposed to the existence of
>> "America/Detroit" or "America/New_York" or "America/Sao_Paolo" or
>> "America/Noronha" or "Asia/Shanghai" or "Europe/Berlin" or....
> 
> As I know I said at least twice, the app does not display raw tzids, but instead strings returned by CLDR (actually ICU, and with a UTC base offset prepended as requested by marketing):
> 
> (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (Detroit)
> (UTC-05:00) Eastern Time (New York)
> (UTC-03:00) Brasilia Standard Time (Sao Paulo)
> etc.

Users ideally shouldn't be exposed to the tzdb maintainers' choices of LOCATIONs at all.  "Los Angeles" isn't much better than "America/Los_Angeles", especially for people not in the LA area.  (As far as I know, we haven't gotten complaints about LA vs. San Francisco or LA vs. San Jose or LA vs. San Diego, but we *have* gotten at least one complaint about Asia/Beijing not working, which is why I mentioned Asia/Shanghai.)

And, depending on the locale, there might be ways of choosing between different timezones that cover the same time zone, e.g.

	(UTC-7:00) Mountain Time (most locations)
	(UTC-7:00) Mountain Time (Arizona)

(with whatever tweaks would be most straightforward to include the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Nation) that might be more obvious than

	(UTC-7:00) Mountain Time (Denver)
	(UTC-7:00) Mountain Time (Phoenix)

("But I'm in Boulder!"  "And I'm in Tempe!"  "And *I'm* in Jackson Hole!").

> Brasilia “Standard” Time is not ideal, but it’s what ICU gives us,

The ICU appears to have, at least in common/main/en.xm:

	<metazone type="Brasilia">
		<long>
			<generic>Brasilia Time</generic>
			<standard>Brasilia Standard Time</standard>
			<daylight>Brasilia Summer Time</daylight>
		</long>
	</metazone>

Not sure how you'd ask for "generic" rather than "standard" or "daylight" or, if you're already doing that, why it's not coughing up "Brasilia Time".

>> (In macOS, I can choose the city in which I live, although, alas, I
>> can't choose Weed.)
> 
> Weed, geonameid 5573449, is very much available in the GeoNames database, including its ‘cities1000’ data which includes only populated places (not other geographic features) that either have a population of 1,000 or greater or are an administrative seat.

But Apple didn't include it.  Deborah? :-) (Yes, I'm just asking because I like the name.)

(BTW, the hatnote on the Wikipedia article for Weed, California is a bit amusing.)