On 08/13/2012 04:12 PM, Paul Eggert 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.
So, not only has it been done, it's been done on a platform that your company helps maintain....
True, but it's not exactly the same thing. The first problem is that you lose this if you don't have Internet connectivity, and on first install a lot of people expect to install from the CD without Internet. Then there's the problem that even though you pick Beijing, you still get the tack on Shanghai. It's hard to tell in China, but pick Miami, FL or something and you'll see it's still in New York. And we had to hack around to save the input city so that it comes back correctly. Also if you click on the map without using the input box, you still get the old functionality. I'm talking with the indicator-datetime developers to see if we can include the geonames database on the install medium, but they asked me to submit here first. Ubuntu Unity and MeeGo are the only distros that I know of that have done anything about this, and our solution isn't even that great. Fedora users, KDE users etc. are still out of luck. More info in bug 892370 : https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/892370
* we have a link from the Vatican to Rome, even though it should be pretty obvious that they're the same time zone.
In hindsight perhaps we should not have had a separate entry for each country, as this has resulted in all sorts of nationalistic commentary that has little to do with the actual data. I'd rather not make matters worse, though.
It's called "Beijing Time".
And time in London is called "Greenwich Mean Time". But we do not have a Europe/Greenwich entry.
Fair point. Though I think my overall point about Greenwich residents not being as confused as Beijing residents or even Shanghai residents stands though.