On 2023-04-21 07:32, Benjamin Drung via tz wrote:
If people are aware of timezones, they often know UTC and their offsets (e.g. Europe/Berlin is UTC+2 summer). But they are probably not aware that the Etc/GMT offsets are inverted (e.g. you have to select Etc/GMT-2 for UTC+2). I was not aware of that and other people as well as the bugs in Ubuntu and Debian indicate (see https://launchpad.net/bugs/1325949 and https://bugs.debian.org/540305).
What do you think about the idea of introducing Etc/UTC+x timezones that have the "correct" offset so that people can select fixed offsets more easily? So Etc/GMT-2 would be renamed to Etc/UTC+2 and Etc/GMT-2 would become a symlink to it (same for all other Etc/GMT+x and Etc/GMT-x timezones).
ISO 4031:1978 first defined the representation of local time differentials, commonly referred to as time zones, with -W/+E. It appears POSIX +W/-E derives from SVID issue 1, published 1985 based on SVR2, possibly in (commercial) AT&T Unix 5 or earlier, supporting GMT and US time zones all positive. Anyone have access to earlier references to Unix time zones or TZ in sources? -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry