On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 11:12 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
For example, in 2014 (the last time Russian clocks changed in a big way) Vladivostok changed seven hours earlier than Moscow did. Given this typical practice, we cannot simply use "MSK+07" as the abbreviation for Vladivostok time, as this abbreviation would be incorrect for several hours whenever Russians change their clocks.
Isn't this problem worse with the UTC offset? While Vladivostok may deviate from from MSK+07 for a few hours around an MSK transition, the UTC offset changes permanently. Still, I am not advocating for MSK+HH abbreviations. Use of the abbreviations should be deprecated and any change to them be considered gratuitous. I still believe a change from VLAT to +10 does not solve any real problem and it will inconvenience many users.