Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:38:50 +0300 From: Yury Tarasievich <yury.tarasievich@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4E818B9A.2000306@gmail.com> | I'd say that the cited request asks for | something that simply isn't there, and never was. Yes, that's true of most of the world, but most Americans don't understand, as they've had timezone names, and standardised abbreviations, essentially forever. Our problem is that the interface we need to provide was also invented by Americans, and insists on having a timezone abbreviation for every timezone - so we're stuck with inventing them for most places in the world. ado's request was (I think) largely because if there are any commonly used abbreviations (even in Russian/Cyrillic, where we need English/Latn) it makes sense for what we invent to be as close as possible to what is actually used. What we should really be doing is making it clear to one and all that these abbreviations are meaningless, rather than FET or EEFT or BYT or anything else, call all the Russian (and related) zones "EST" (they're Eastern, with respect to most of Europe anyway, and they have a standard time), for no better reason than to make it clear to everyone that the abbreviations have no practical purpose, and are better never used, anywhere. kre