At the end of this letter there's a blast from the past: results of a 1993 survey of time zone abbreviations. At least at that time, and at least in the scope of the survey, use of abbreviations such as "AEST" was very uncommon; this was (at least in part) what motivated the use of abbreviations such as "EST" for Australian time zones. Use of abbreviations such as "AEST" has seemingly become more common; see, for example, http://www.abc.net.au/ra. But as Paul Eggert's recent survey indicates, "EST" still seems to hold sway. I'd conclude that it's appropriate to leave zones such as "Australia/Brisbane" as is to avoid unnecessary change. A possibility would be to add lines such as Zone Australia/CST 9:30 Aus CST Zone Australia/ACST 9:30 Aus ACST Zone Australia/CXT 9:30 Aus CST/CDT Zone Australia/ACXT 9:30 Aus ACST/ACDT to the "australasia" file; this would let folks who wanted specific abbreviations to get them. --ado
From ado Thu Jun 10 20:28:51 1993 Return-Path: <ado> Received: by bossie.nci.nih.gov (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA22772; Thu, 10 Jun 93 20:28:51 EDT Date: Thu, 10 Jun 93 20:28:51 EDT From: ado (Arthur David Olson) Message-Id: <9306110028.AA22772@bossie.nci.nih.gov> To: tz Subject: time zone survey Status: RO
Attached are results from a casual time zone survey. Last week I ran through the news articles on nih-csl.dcrt.nih.gov (the nntp newsfeed system for elsie.nci.nih.gov), getting the "Date: " and "Message-ID: " line from each article. Article file names were obtained from the news history file to ensure that any cross-posted articles would only be used once. I tossed out data with unzoned time stamps, data without a recognizable domained system name in the Message-ID, and data from ".com" sites. This left 17,912 date/name pairs. I massaged the data into the form... 05210205 (AEST) megalink.apana.org.au 05010053 +0000 compex.e-burg.su ...where the first field gives two digits each of month, day, hour, and minute from the Date, the second field gives the time zone that appeared in the Date, and the third field is the system name from the Message-ID. This data is available in the file ~ftp/pub/zonesurvey on elsie.nci.nih.gov (128.231.16.1). Eighty-nine different zones showed up (sorted alphabetically here): (AEST) +0000 +0001 +0100 +02 +0200 +0300 +0400 +0500 +0530 +0600 +0611 +0700 +0730 +0800 +0930 +1 +1000 +1100 +1200 +1300 +1700 -0000 -0100 -0300 -0400 -0500 -0520 -0600 -0700 -0800 -1 -1000 -1200 -600 ACST ADT AEST AET ARG AST BSC BST CDT CED CEST CET CST DST EDT EDZ EET EMT EST GMT GMT+01 GMT+0200 GMT+1 GMT+12 GMT+1200 GMT+2 IDT IST JST LCL MDT MED MES MEST MESZ MET MEWT MEZ MST NDT NZDT NZST PDT PST SGP TUR TZONE U UT WET WET+0100 WST XDT Y The number of times each zone showed up (sorted by number of times here): 3820 -0400 1925 EDT 1902 -0500 994 EST 919 -0700 913 CDT 748 +0000 690 +0200 664 CST 655 PDT 621 +0100 583 -0600 499 +1000 467 MDT 398 PST 275 +1200 211 BST 170 +0001 153 MET 138 -0800 135 MST 123 +0300 116 CET 98 +0800 97 -0300 53 +0400 51 +0930 45 -0100 36 +1300 35 WET 33 -0000 27 UT 23 ACST 22 MEZ 22 NZST 20 +1700 20 GMT+12 17 IDT 16 TUR 14 MESZ 9 +02 8 MEST 8 WET+0100 7 +0600 7 CED 7 CEST 7 LCL 6 AET 6 DST 6 EET 6 EMT 5 AST 5 GMT 5 GMT+01 5 GMT+0200 5 U 4 -1000 4 IST 3 +0700 3 +1100 3 -0520 3 -1200 3 -600 3 EDZ 3 TZONE 3 Y 2 ADT 2 ARG 2 BSC 2 GMT+1200 2 MED 2 MES 2 SGP 1 (AEST) 1 +0500 1 +0530 1 +0611 1 +0730 1 +1 1 -1 1 AEST 1 GMT+1 1 GMT+2 1 JST 1 MEWT 1 NDT 1 NZDT 1 WST 1 XDT Aside from the 51 "+0930" articles from Australia, only four "oddball" numeric time zones show up, and each of them only shows up from one system (the Date and system name from the original data are shown here): 3 -0520 Wed, 2 Jun 93 22:22:00 -0520 freddy.ampr.ab.ca Thu, 3 Jun 93 20:08:00 -0520 freddy.ampr.ab.ca Sat, 5 Jun 93 16:05:00 -0520 freddy.ampr.ab.ca 1 +0530 1 Jun 93 15:30:55 +0530 imtech.ernet.in 1 +0611 Wed, 02 Jun 93 16:08:33 +0611 trashcan.hacktic.nl 1 +0730 6 Jun 1993 08:25:56 +0730 news.Colorado.EDU Time zone abbrevations that show up in tzdata93c.tar.Z files: ADT Atlantic Daylight Time AST Atlantic Standard Time BST British Standard Time CDT Central Daylight Time CET Central European Time CST Central Standard Time EDT Eastern Daylight Time EET Eastern European Time EST Eastern Standard Time IDT Israeli Daylight Time IST Israeli Standard Time JST Japanese Standard Time MDT Mountain Daylight Time MET Middle European Time MST Mountain Standard Time NZDT New Zealand Daylight Time NZST New Zealand Standard Time PDT Pacific Daylight Time PST Pacific Standard Time WET Western European Time WST Western Standard Time Time zone abbreviations that are fairly clear are: (AEST) Australian Eastern Standard Time (used only by one system) Fri, 21 May 93 02:05:36 (AEST) megalink.apana.org.au ACST Australian Central Standard Time 21 May 93 13:18:16 ACST state.systems.sa.gov.au Tue, 25 May 93 13:27:42 ACST cola.pax.tpa.com.au ... 4 Jun 93 00:47:42 ACST state.systems.sa.gov.au Sun, 06 Jun 93 19:13:17 ACST cola.pax.tpa.com.au AEST Australian Eastern Standard Time Fri, 04 Jun 93 21:47:10 AEST ese.escape.brisnet.org.au AET Australian Eastern Time (used only by one system) 10 May 93 08:50:04 AET licre.ludwig.edu.au 27 May 93 19:00:11 AET licre.ludwig.edu.au 28 May 93 12:46:13 AET licre.ludwig.edu.au 1 Jun 93 08:46:51 AET licre.ludwig.edu.au 1 Jun 93 09:02:16 AET licre.ludwig.edu.au 7 Jun 93 14:52:39 AET licre.ludwig.edu.au CED Central European Daylight 28 Apr 93 21:00:06 CED alphanet.alphanet.ch 27 May 93 22:53:59 CED sourcery.han.de 28 May 93 18:36:06 CED sourcery.han.de 1 Jun 93 22:16:54 CED sourcery.han.de 1 Jun 93 22:22:52 CED sourcery.han.de 1 Jun 93 22:45:24 CED sourcery.han.de 2 Jun 93 21:05:10 CED sourcery.han.de CEST Central European Standard Time Tue, 25 May 93 07:26:34 CEST obula.nbg.sub.org Tue, 25 May 93 15:58:02 CEST obula.nbg.sub.org Wed, 26 May 93 12:46:27 CEST obula.nbg.sub.org Tue, 01 Jun 93 11:18:35 CEST obula.nbg.sub.org Wed, 02 Jun 93 08:42:25 CEST obula.nbg.sub.org Fri, 04 Jun 1993 17:45:26 CEST oktagon.rd.sub.org Sun, 06 Jun 93 20:44:27 CEST scrum.greenie.muc.de MED Middle European Daylight (used only by one system) 3 Jun 93 00:17:24 MED lifestyle.rhein-main.de 6 Jun 93 12:27:48 MED lifestyle.rhein-main.de MES Middle European Standard (used only by one system) Sat, 22 May 93 12:46:44 MES wolferts.ka.sub.org Sun, 06 Jun 93 15:05:50 MES wolferts.ka.sub.org MESZ Middle European Standard Zone Tue, 25 May 1993 17:49:06 MESZ email.tuwien.ac.at Wed, 26 May 1993 12:12:26 MESZ gwdu14.gwdg.de Wed, 26 May 93 14:03:58 MESZ lbl.gov Fri, 28 May 1993 00:02:42 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Fri, 28 May 1993 00:03:34 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Fri, 28 May 1993 00:04:26 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Fri, 28 May 1993 00:12:50 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Fri, 28 May 1993 00:13:56 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Fri, 28 May 1993 00:15:10 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Sat, 29 May 1993 01:30:40 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Tue, 01 Jun 1993 00:46:06 MESZ nasim.sta.sub.org Thu, 03 Jun 93 10:48:04 MESZ aie.wu-wien.ac.at Fri, 4 Jun 93 10:56:33 MESZ exaib.wu-wien.ac.at Fri, 4 Jun 93 11:06:41 MESZ exaib.wu-wien.ac.at MEST Middle European Standard Time Tue, 25 May 93 12:45:47 MEST xivic.bo.open.de Tue, 25 May 93 14:20:53 MEST xivic.bo.open.de Tue, 25 May 93 14:48:22 MEST xivic.bo.open.de Wed, 26 May 93 23:22:22 MEST joker.wes.open.de Sat, 29 May 1993 18:22:55 MEST netmbx.netmbx.de Sat, 29 May 1993 18:21:07 MEST netmbx.netmbx.de Sun, 30 May 1993 12:57:21 MEST netmbx.netmbx.de Tue, 1 Jun 1993 21:51:09 MEST netmbx.netmbx.de MEZ Middle European Zone (used primarily in Germany) Mon, 10 May 93 20:47:50 MEZ rhrz.uni-bonn.de Wed, 26 May 93 12:59:57 MEZ vm.univie.ac.at ... Sun, 06 Jun 1993 14:32:28 MEZ sartar.toppoint.de Sun, 06 Jun 1993 18:37:50 MEZ sartar.toppoint.de UT Universal Time (used only by one system) 29 May 1993 21:14 UT kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov 31 May 1993 15:40 UT kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov ... 3 Jun 1993 21:36 UT kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov 4 Jun 1993 00:20 UT kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov WET+0100 Western European Time+0100 8 Apr 93 15:00:02 WET+0100 ittpub.nl 1 Jun 93 19:26:08 WET+0100 ittpub.nl 2 Jun 93 16:17:13 WET+0100 ittpub.nl 2 Jun 93 20:24:36 WET+0100 ittpub.nl 4 Jun 93 13:32:33 WET+0100 ittpub.nl 4 Jun 93 13:39:50 WET+0100 ittpub.nl 4 Jun 93 13:47:53 WET+0100 ittpub.nl 4 Jun 93 14:08:22 WET+0100 ittpub.nl Time zone abbreviations that are guesswork are: ARG Argentina? Tue, 25 May 93 12:46:21 ARG satlink.net Thu, 27 May 93 07:36:01 ARG satlink.net BSC ? Tue, 25 May 1993 10:51:05 BSC FINHUTC.HUT.FI Tue, 1 Jun 1993 11:57:00 BSC brfapesp.bitnet DST Daylight Saving Time? Thu, 27 May 93 11:00:24 DST cmrra.ca Thu, 27 May 93 23:31:02 DST cmrra.ca Fri, 28 May 93 17:26:14 DST cmrra.ca Sat, 29 May 93 16:48:42 DST cmrra.ca Sat, 29 May 93 16:54:30 DST cmrra.ca Sun, 30 May 93 14:38:30 DST cmrra.ca EDZ ? Mon, 31 May 93 18:14:42 EDZ wship.nullnet.fi Fri, 04 Jun 93 20:41:41 EDZ swob.nullnet.fi Fri, 04 Jun 93 20:53:45 EDZ swob.nullnet.fi EMT ? 28 Apr 1993 12:08:23 EMT alf.uib.no 29 Apr 1993 11:15:44 EMT alf.uib.no 29 Apr 1993 11:17:15 EMT alf.uib.no 28 May 1993 17:56:54 EMT alf.uib.no 1 Jun 1993 19:43:42 EMT alf.uib.no 3 Jun 1993 18:09:42 EMT alf.uib.no MEWT ? 12 May 93 07:41:03 MEWT mble.philips.be LCL LoCaL time? Tue, 1 Jun 1993 09:18:43 LCL kona.cc.mcgill.ca Wed, 2 Jun 1993 07:48:00 LCL mp.cs.niu.edu Wed, 2 Jun 1993 13:44:00 LCL mp.cs.niu.edu Thu, 3 Jun 1993 09:33:00 LCL oas2-tic.safb.af.mil Thu, 3 Jun 1993 08:25:39 LCL grouse.umesve.maine.edu Fri, 4 Jun 1993 20:09:05 LCL CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri, 4 Jun 1993 20:19:59 LCL CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU NDT ? Tue, 25 May 1993 15:39:29 NDT UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU SGP ? Mon, 31 May 93 15:43:36 SGP uwm.edu Fri, 4 Jun 93 10:20:26 SGP uwm.edu TUR Turkey? Wednesday, 5 May 1993 23:23:11 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Wednesday, 26 May 1993 09:03:58 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Wednesday, 26 May 1993 09:05:39 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Wednesday, 26 May 1993 09:06:26 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Wednesday, 26 May 1993 20:47:38 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Thursday, 27 May 1993 10:15:14 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Thursday, 27 May 1993 12:28:59 TUR TREARN.BITNET Thursday, 27 May 1993 13:20:19 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Thursday, 27 May 1993 15:20:12 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Friday, 28 May 1993 11:01:42 TUR TREARN.BITNET Friday, 28 May 1993 12:53:52 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Sunday, 30 May 1993 12:15:24 TUR TREARN.BITNET Saturday, 29 May 1993 12:46:01 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Monday, 31 May 1993 21:44:49 TUR TRMETU.BITNET Saturday, 5 Jun 1993 18:30:45 TUR TREARN.BITNET Sunday, 6 Jun 1993 13:14:56 TUR TREARN.BITNET TZONE ? Mon, 31 May 1993 05:01:19 TZONE VAXF.COLORADO.EDU Wed, 2 Jun 1993 19:59:49 TZONE carson.u.washington.edu Fri, 4 Jun 1993 09:21:33 TZONE sunburn.uwaterloo.ca XDT ? Tue, 25 May 1993 10:20:55 XDT sfanet.nrl.navy.mil The results make me think there's little prospect of discovering useful time zone information (in particular, time transitions that don't already show up in tzdata93c.tar.Z) from running through news articles; someone with an account on a site that does extensive archiving of news might prove me wrong. --ado