On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au> wrote:
| It looks like there is only one valid timezone abbreviation, which is | EST! EST seems to change its offset whenever Australia/Melbourne | changes from dst or back?
That's right, and it isn't "dst", it is "summer time" - the Summer Time Act (1974?) defines the time zones as Eastern Standard Time, and Eastern Summer Time - both "EST" - which I cannot believe is by accident.
[...]
If you don't like it, ask the Victorian Parliament if they might please change it for you... (but expect opposition to the idea.)
It's less about wanting to change that, more about trying to understand what the advantage of this is... It requires a lot more knowledge about timezones than with two timezone abbreviations. To correctly interpret the time, you always need the full timestamp (and location?) and you would need to know if at that moment in this area it was Summer or Standard time. So what is the reason for doing it that way? Are there other timezones that also share one timezone abbrevation for their DST and non-DST time? What is the standard way of interpreting a time without a given month or year? Would one just assume the non-DST offset? Thanks, Joachim