On 7 April 2013 22:16, David Patte ₯ <dpatte@relativedata.com> wrote:

True, but what we will provide is a proposal which also provides similiar changes to the central, western, Lord Howe and Eucla zones, where appropriate.

Don't forget Antarctica/Casey and Antarctica/Macquarie in the antarctica file, as well. At any time that those zones observed an Australia-based time, their abbreviations should be handled consistently with the rest of Australia.

On 7 April 2013 21:53, David Patte ₯ <dpatte@relativedata.com> wrote:

It is not difficult to produce a patch which changes the abbreviations back to the time of original implementation of Daylight Saving time, but I'd prefer to get a concensus as to when the D/S abbreviations came into more promenant usage, if indeed the D/D abbreviations were ever more commonly used.

I think trying to go that route would end up sowing somewhat more confusion than that which the patch aims to avoid, since "S" would mean two things before a certain date, but only one thing after that date. Not to mention that such a date would be impossible to pin down, for the same reason the broader discussion on these abbreviations has occurred (opinions here vary from "it's already happened" to "it hasn't happened" to "it's irrelevant"). Either make the change for all years, or don't make it at all.

On 7 April 2013 21:19, David Patte ₯ <dpatte@relativedata.com> wrote:

We will submit the patch to the list for review, and hope it is implemented. But if it is not, we have decided to fork tz and provide a new distribution with the new abbreviations applied.

I sincerely hope that it doesn't come to a fork and that the patch will be accepted. It seems to me that, despite a still-vocal minority, we have a significantly clearer consensus on this matter now than we did even a year ago. Hopefully, the coordinator(s) recognize this and we can remain a unified project despite differing opinions.

For the record, it is my preference to proceed with the AxST/AxDT format. Australia/Eucla would then become ACWST/ACWDT for consistency with its neighbors. I feel that for Australia/Lord_Howe, LHST being quite unique already would mean that LHST/LHDT could be used without the A, but others may disagree.

--
Tim Parenti