On Dec 8, 2011, at 10:14 AM, Zefram wrote:
GMT is not at all exceptional in the relevant respect, of referring to a specific offset rather than to a civil timezone. MST (aside from a Moscow-based interpretation) refers specifically to UT-7h, not to the dance that clocks perform in Denver. Likewise, MDT refers specifically to UT-6h.
To accurately represent GMT and BST (as used in the UK) and MST and MDT (as used in north America) in the timezone database, you'd need essentially:
Zone GMT 0:00 - GMT Zone BST 1:00 - BST Zone MST -7:00 - MST Zone MDT -6:00 - MDT
and similarly for rather a lot of the other abbreviations. (It so happens that two of these four hypothetical zones are already in the database (GMT and MST), but that's unusual among the abbreviations.)
If you don't do this, but instead have just links such as BST -> Europe/London, then at best it's still necessary to search within the timezone data to find out what the abbreviation means. That's not actually representing the abbreviation's meaning; it's a bad implementation of the hypothetical abbreviation-to-candidate-zone index. (Bad largely because it can only show one candidate zone per abbreviation.)
Dang, I think that would be a much better solution, for me. It would decrease access time of information retrieval, if I get it right. I will research as a possible solution, for me. Thank you! The information I provided should not be considered an authoritative work. I am a peon in the grand scheme, and provided in hope that it may be of some use. I am not even in a position to take a position on adding data to the database. Steve