On 2017-01-17 00:06, Paul Eggert wrote:
JST wasn't removed everywhere, only in areas that typically use numeric abbreviations. The idea was to use JST in occupied regions like Asia/Hong_Kong that have alphabetic traditions like HKT, and to use +09 in occupied regions like Asia/Yangon which lack such traditions. That way, historical tables in these areas will tend to use a consistent style, which is a plus.
One could also argue that the choice of the same abbreviation for all occupied regions provides additional information. But I agree that the ice is thin here and that it is also a matter of style.
Some of the previous tables' JST transitions were dubious anyway. Was it really called "Japan Standard Time" in Jakarta on September 22, 1945? And why wasn't "JST" used for Asia/Jayapura during 1942-1944 when Jayapura was at +09 and was under Japanese Imperial control? It was too much trouble to decide when to use JST vs +09, and it was a relief to remove this questionable political trivia when possible.
Well, it certainly was called the same as in Japan by the Japanese, and they determined the time scale. And the proleptic use of acronyms for time scales also is a deviation from the guideline of recording only the most popular English use at the time. For a while I thought that the abbreviations of tzdb could converge to some CLDR format in the English locale but this may not even be a useful long term goal. Anyway, I fully agree with your quest to take systematic decisions in such cases. And many thanks for the enormous work and the TLC you are expending on tzdb! Michael Deckers. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus