On 06/02/2016 01:16 PM, Pavel V. Rochnyack wrote:
I suppose what this argument, together with the previously listed arguments, is enough to set abbreviations in 'Asia/Tomsk' to NOVT/KRAT like already done in 'Asia/Novokuznetsk'.
This is the sort of thing we're trying to move away from. Abbreviations like NOVT are our inventions and are rarely used outside the tzdata context; we really can't defend them. Another problem with abbreviations like NOVT is that their meanings change with time. For example, NOVT stands for +06 now, but it stands for +07 before October 2014, for +06 again before March 2011, etc. The ambiguity of "NOVT" is atypical for English-language time zone abbreviations, and this unexpected aspect of our invented abbreviations can easily confuse non-experts. In contrast, abbreviations like +06 and +07 are unambiguous.
So remove the feature entirely.
That's not a practical option, as time zone abbreviations are a standard part of ISO C, of POSIX, and of many programming systems that use a tzcode-like interface, so we need to put *something* in there. Numeric abbreviations are reasonable placeholders for zones lacking well-supported English-language time zone abbreviations.