Sure, off the top of my head: • Time zone is often associated with a specific user in a particular location. multiple *calendar* systems are commonly shown in parallel within one UI, sometimes within the same string. For devices (say a desktop or mobile computer, or a physical clock) there is usually a single setting for time zone. All of this to say, that the 'western' and 'ethiopian' [1] systems should be shown side by side, on a single device that currently would only have a single time zone. • As opposed to the division AM/PM, there are time periods that need to be used ( see https://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/8473 ) such as "ከሰዓት - afternoon - 6:01 to 11:59 Ethiopic = 12:01 to 17:59 Gregorian" which need to be calculated based on local timezone-adjusted time. If the time zone were skewed by 6 hours then the period would be off. • It also wasn't clear if the day-of-month boundary would necessary follow the adjusted time. A 'simple' TZ offset doesn't allow this flexibility. • there are other hour cycle systems (day start at sunset, astronomical julian day start at noon etc) and so more flexibility is needed in general. • for software use, our APIs (ICU) return timezone information separate from time of day calculation. I know that wearing a watch upside-down is done in some places, but this may also not be optimal. Hope this helps, Steven - [1] we definitely need better terms here— this system is certainly used outside of ethiopia. I use the term 'western' because that is what I have seen used contrastively with the 'ethiopian' system. On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 3:46 PM Khalid H. Duri <zewari@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Steven, can you expand on some of the problems that can be anticipated with using UTC-3? On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 3:43 PM Steven R. Loomis <srl@icu-project.org> wrote:
For what it's worth, CLDR is tracking this issue at
https://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/9716 — my current thinking is to have something called a "time cycle", but it would be applied on top of the time zone calculation. Supporting it if it were UTC-3 has other problems.
I think it should be considered a localization and not a time zone issue.
Steven
On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 3:14 PM David Patte <dpatte@relativedata.com>
wrote:
But if you ask them in English, they say '12 o'clock'. If they wear a watch, it uses 'English time', and is set with midnight/noon at twelve. But they subtract 6 from 'English time' time when speaking Swahili and their own tribal languages.
On 2018-09-12 18:03, David Patte wrote:
The system is also used in Kenya, Ethiopia's neighbour. If you ask anyone in Swahili what time lunch is, they say 'six o'clock'.
On 2018-09-12 17:41, Steve Allen wrote:
On Wed 2018-09-12T16:58:39-0400 Arthur David Olson hath writ:
Per the "Theory" file: "...the world is partitioned into regions
whose
clocks all agree..." So at least at the moment, the goal is to reflect what clocks say the time is rather than what people say the time is. That goal is, of course, subject to change. It would be useful to know if privately set clocks and wristwatches commonly use this 6 hour offset. If that is the case then it seems that Ethiopia is much the same as Asia/Urumqi
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