Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe most robust implementations of the TZ database already have some way of expressing an offset in this way.  If people want to use a meaningful offset identifier, e.g., "-04:00" (with or without the colon) as a replacement for an abbreviation like "EDT" in their individual cases, there is, practically speaking, very little they need to do to accomplish that.

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Tim Parenti



On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 21:15, Random832 <random832@fastmail.us> wrote:
On 10/11/2011 12:45 AM, Robert Elz wrote:
Yes, that was deliberate - that is, part of the aim is to try and reinforce
the understanding that these abbreviations offer no meaningful value
whatever...  (except perhaps in one of the very few jurisdictions where
they are actually defined, and even there, only if the application has
some other means to know that the particular jurisdiction is the one of
concern.)

kre
Why not have a "no abbreviation" mode where the 'abbreviation' is just "-04:00", which _is_ meaningful?