On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 1:12 PM, Paul Eggert
<eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
On 08/14/2012 03:49 AM, James M Leddy wrote:
> * The common proposed fix is that we should be using "human
> presentable" names and have a mapping from these names to the
> actual timezones. Since that proposal, indeed since the inception
> of desktop Linux/Unix, no one (as far as I know) has actually done
> this
I happened to read this on my laptop which runs Ubuntu 12.04 and uses
the tz database. I clicked on the time in the upper right-hand part
of my screen, clicked on "Time & Date Settings", typed "Beijing", and
it automatically changed my desktop to Beijing Time aka CST.
For whatever it is worth, on Mac OS X (10.7.4), the System Preferences Time & Date panel allows you to choose the time zone by clicking on a world map. Clicking on one place in China came up with a name like 'Yueying - China' , so I typed 'Beijing - China' and that was accepted (and the highlighted location moved nearer to where Beijing actually is).
So, Apple has done this job on Mac OS X, I think.
That's not a definitive for or against the addition — it is just a data point for consideration.