The obvious name, if we were to insist on qualifying zone abbreviations
wth references to location, would be "American Eastern Standard Time"
(etc) - abbreviated as AEST... After all it applies in both Canada
and the US, so USEST would require a CEST for what is essentially the
same thing, and doesn't it also apply in parts of Latin America?
So, AEST for Australia and AEST for the US/Canada etc.
Not complete enough!
What about using the ISO-3166 2-letter abbrev (the ISO codes are already in the distribution, iso3166.tab )?
So:
This should be unambiguous enough, I think.
This could be extended, for historical contexts, with ISO-8601:
- VECST-20110612 (Venezuala Time, as changed on 12 June 2011)
- VECST-20120801 (etc)
and so on.
Or we just leave well enough alone, and leave things as they are.
Oh. Well, if you are going to take the sensible approach ...
I think the issue is simple: "While taking no position on the advisability and necessity of unique or user-friendly timezone abbreviations, this is not in the mandate of Mr Olson's group".