On 2008-08-27, Eric Ulevik wrote:
On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
For abbreviations, it's not clear whether "AEDT" or "EDT" is more common, though I suppose "AEDT" has a slight edge.
I'd like to hear more from Australian correspondents on this before thinking about specific changes, though.
A federal government web site (eg. http://www.australia.gov.au/Time) is not authoritative as the time in states is strictly a right of the states.
The terms 'summer time' and 'daylight saving time' are widely used. 'Australian' as a prefix would be very unusual, as it is commonly understood. Abbreviations typically omit the 'A'.
Example:
"EST denotes Eastern Standard Time. Summertime or daylight saving time is commonly expressed as EDST (eastern daylight saving time)."
Reference:
http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/Lawlink/cru/ll_cru.nsf/pages/cru_daylightsavin...
My guess would be that AEDT is becoming more prevalent on web sites which are built using systems trying to cover global time zones (eg. as a dateline in a news story).
As an Australian who has battled this issue for years, I am convinced that there is absolutely NO useful answer to alphabetic abbreviations for Australian time zones. This past local summer, I had to deal with Australian websites that used AEST to mean "Australian Eastern Standard Time" and "Australian Eastern Summer Time". In other words, whatever people might like to think, these abbreviations mean nothing unless they can be disambiguated by other context. Arguing about changes, at least until such time as the national government decides to take control of this (which I think most unlikely), is really a waste of bits. If you care, you have to use numeric time zone indicators. Nothing else has any reliable meaning. Greg