Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 23:38:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com> Message-ID: <200104070638.XAA27517@sic.twinsun.com> | A practical example of this can be found in the accident reports | published by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Yes, there are cases where absolute precision is required - I think they'd be better off using numeric offsets than inventing their own abbreviations, but as long as they're defining what works for them, it probably doesn't matter. | My guess is that | the officials there dislike abbreviations ending in "DT" as the phrase | "Summer Time" is more common, and they don't feel the need for the | leading "A" as their reports are only about Australian accidents. On the leading "A" in general, "A" meaning "Australia" is only ever used in places where everyone would know it is Australia anyway, A is such a common letter (AEST could be "American Eastern Standard Time" - since it covers all of North America, and I think Central America, probably even parts of South America, though it wouldn't be Eastern there... - it could also be African Eastern Standard Time, if East Africa ever decided to have a common name for their timezone.) "AU" (or AUS) is Australia, not just "A". Of course, inside Australia, people do sometimes use AEST to mean Aus EST when used by people who know there is an EST in North America, and who are trying to be (usually unnecessarily) clear - but take AEST as a string to someone (not on this list or other like it) in Europe, or anywhere in the Americas, and ask them to guess what it represents, and the chances of many of them guessing "A" for Australia is pretty small. | That's an interesting theory, but I think it more plausible that it | was simply an accident. That could be too, of course. | I chalk up most of these problems to inadequate time zone software | more than to inadequate mail software. For example, a few people are | still stuck with POSIX time zones and must set TZ='NZST-12...'. It is | easy to go wrong and set TZ='NZST+12' instead. People get the things wrong for all kinds of reasons - a month or so I sent some mail out that identified itself as coming from 1993 - I had run the battery on the laptop I was using completely dry, and that apparently caused its clock to lose all idea of the date when I rebooted with a changed battery (or AC, I no longer remember). I didn't notice, and didn't think to reset the clock... Then there's easily confused syntax (as in the + / - zone offset stuff). Then there are broken mailers that don't do the right thing even when the user is really trying to get it all right, and is prepared to do all the work. Then there are the users who simply don't care - they don't care in the slightest if the time on their computer, or its timezone, are anything like correct (sometimes deliberately even setting the time backwards so limited use evaluation licences keep on working...) and have the attitude that if the time is OK to them, no-one else should be concerned about it (I get mail sometimes that contains "I know the time is wrong, I might fix it one day" from correspondents that know I complain in replies if the date field is ludicrous). kre