John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu> writes:
Sure. But for the most part, when someone knows what time zone they're in, they know they're in US/Eastern, not "the same time zone as New York."
No, I think most new users won't know what "US/Eastern" is. They'll get a chooser like the tzselect command that is part of tzcode, and the chooser will walk them through to the correct setting without their having to know either "US/Eastern" or "America/New_York". Once you have a decent chooser, the zone names are somewhat arbitrary, and we might as well use more-accurate ones. Another issue is that place names like "New York" tend to be more stable than time zone labels like "Eastern standard time". It's easier for the tz database if we use the more-stable names. For example, the most recent change to US time zone labels occurred in December 2000 (with the introduction of Chamorro standard time), but since the tz database uses place names this didn't affect users' TZ settings. The rest of this message is a sample run of tzselect. The user input comes after the '#?'. Obviously tzselect can be improved upon (and there are alternate choosers if you don't like tzselect), but it should illustrate what I'm talking about. ----- Please identify a location so that time zone rules can be set correctly. Please select a continent or ocean. 1) Africa 2) Americas 3) Antarctica 4) Arctic Ocean 5) Asia 6) Atlantic Ocean 7) Australia 8) Europe 9) Indian Ocean 10) Pacific Ocean 11) none - I want to specify the time zone using the Posix TZ format. #? 2 Please select a country. 1) Anguilla 18) Ecuador 35) Paraguay 2) Antigua & Barbuda 19) El Salvador 36) Peru 3) Argentina 20) French Guiana 37) Puerto Rico 4) Aruba 21) Greenland 38) St Kitts & Nevis 5) Bahamas 22) Grenada 39) St Lucia 6) Barbados 23) Guadeloupe 40) St Pierre & Miquelon 7) Belize 24) Guatemala 41) St Vincent 8) Bolivia 25) Guyana 42) Suriname 9) Brazil 26) Haiti 43) Trinidad & Tobago 10) Canada 27) Honduras 44) Turks & Caicos Is 11) Cayman Islands 28) Jamaica 45) United States 12) Chile 29) Martinique 46) Uruguay 13) Colombia 30) Mexico 47) Venezuela 14) Costa Rica 31) Montserrat 48) Virgin Islands (UK) 15) Cuba 32) Netherlands Antilles 49) Virgin Islands (US) 16) Dominica 33) Nicaragua 17) Dominican Republic 34) Panama #? 45 Please select one of the following time zone regions. 1) Eastern Time 2) Eastern Time - Michigan - most locations 3) Eastern Time - Kentucky - Louisville area 4) Eastern Time - Kentucky - Wayne County 5) Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - most locations 6) Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - Crawford County 7) Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - Starke County 8) Eastern Standard Time - Indiana - Switzerland County 9) Central Time 10) Central Time - Michigan - Wisconsin border 11) Central Time - North Dakota - Oliver County 12) Mountain Time 13) Mountain Time - south Idaho & east Oregon 14) Mountain Time - Navajo 15) Mountain Standard Time - Arizona 16) Pacific Time 17) Alaska Time 18) Alaska Time - Alaska panhandle 19) Alaska Time - Alaska panhandle neck 20) Alaska Time - west Alaska 21) Aleutian Islands 22) Hawaii #? 1 The following information has been given: United States Eastern Time Therefore TZ='America/New_York' will be used. Local time is now: Wed Aug 17 01:51:23 EDT 2005. Universal Time is now: Wed Aug 17 05:51:23 UTC 2005. Is the above information OK? 1) Yes 2) No #? 1 You can make this change permanent for yourself by appending the line TZ='America/New_York'; export TZ to the file '.profile' in your home directory; then log out and log in again. Here is that TZ value again, this time on standard output so that you can use the ./tzselect command in shell scripts: America/New_York