Your cross posting caution was noted I similarly lurk on the ietf list and occasionally sally forth to pass comment. The issue of the ambiguity of abbreviations like "EST" might best be solved by prefixing the three initials with the ISO Country Code see http://itl5.itlnet.com/isocodes.htm for examples. So the Australian EST would be AUEST and the US EST would be USEST. There may be another advantage to do with Daylight Savings/Summer Time. These (I believe) are determined at national or regional level so those countries who do observe Daylight Savings/Summer Time would have two entries per time zone. for example:- USEST UTC -5:00 USEDT UTC -4:00 Add to this the entry and exit criteria for Daylight Savings/Summer Time (and I hope I get this correct!) USEST UTC -5:00 Last Sunday in September USEDT UTC -4:00 Last Sunday in March GBGMT UTC 0:00 Last Sunday in October GBBST UTC +1:00 4th Sunday in March?? or the explicit dates if there is no sensible way of determining when the clocks change! For countries like Japan where they do not observe Daylight Savings the entry would look like JPxxx UTC +8:00 The absence of date showing non-observation Hope that helps a bit Roger Chapman Specilaist, Collaborative Applications Ford Systems Integration Center Information Technology and eBusiness Ford Motor Company -----Original Message----- From: David Madeo [mailto:David.Madeo@morganstanley.com] Sent: 06 April 2001 05:21 To: Greg Black Cc: Paul Eggert; tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov; ietf-calendar@imc.org Subject: Re: Updated Australian time zone names/strings <Caution: cross posted to both ietf-calendar and tz mailgroups. Please reply carefully> Since I'm a lurker on both the tz and ietf lists, occasionally I see that it's appropriate to mix the audiences. This thread from the tz list is whether the tz maintainers should be trying to uniquify the timezone abbreviations such as "EST" which can mean several different timezones around the world, depending on whether you ask an Australian or an American. Greg Black wrote:
Paul Eggert wrote:
| * How important are unique time zone abbreviations? | | Here I tend to agree with the point (most recently made by Chris | Newman) that unique abbreviations should not be essential for proper | operation of software.
I think this flies in the face of common sense and the old principle about being flexible in handling input while trying to make output as good as possible.
I'd certainly prefer unique and unambiguous abbreviations (AEST) as well as unique names "Australia/Sydney" based on the Continent/Largest City. Anytime we can reduce confusion and make something easier for people *and* computers to understand, we should.
|| The final decision is Arthur David Olson's, since he's maintaining | the database. My own mild preference for now (given what's been said | so far) would be to leave it alone.
I know the decision is in Arthur David Olson's hands, but I would imagine that he will be responsive to the wishes of the affected parties. I'm keen to see more input into this.
The tz database is the closest thing to a "standard" timezone listing. As such, there's a lot of benefit if it does the "right" thing. I've cc'd the ietf list since they are effectively "users" of this sort of data and might have some input. dmadeo