Oscar van Vlijmen <ovv@hetnet.nl> writes:
He/she would think: Boise, that's in Idaho (USA), so he would expect to find a zone like America/Idaho. But no, he has to use America/Denver
That's not a good example. He should use America/Boise.
single zone name (e.g. Georgia) being a valid zone name (instead of Asia/Tbilisi).
That's another bad example. The vast majority of uses of the name "Georgia" in English refer to the USA state, not to the nation of Georgia.
The TZ software has probably a fine mechanism for setting up userfriendly zone names. See the 'backward' file with all its Links.
I'd rather not head that direction, since I don't want us to waste time arbitrating disputes over what's the best use of names like "Georgia". We have enough political problems as it is; let's not generate more of them. However, to answer the main point, the zone.tab file is supposed to help English-language users relate the Zone names (which are somewhat arbitrary) to a description of the affected region. The 'tzselect' shell script that comes with the tz database is one way to do this. People who prefer GUIs can easily substitute their own implementation that uses zone.tab. Here's a sample 'tzselect' interaction to show how this might work for your example user in Boise. $ tzselect 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 Time - Indiana - most locations 6) Eastern Time - Indiana - Crawford County 7) Eastern Time - Indiana - Starke County 8) Eastern Time - Indiana - Switzerland County 9) Central Time 10) Central Time - Indiana - Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin, Perry & Pulaski 11) Central Time - Indiana - Pike County 12) Central Time - Michigan - Dickinson, Gogebic, Iron & Menominee Counties 13) Central Time - North Dakota - Oliver County 14) Central Time - North Dakota - Morton County (except Mandan area) 15) Mountain Time 16) Mountain Time - south Idaho & east Oregon 17) Mountain Time - Navajo 18) Mountain Standard Time - Arizona 19) Pacific Time 20) Alaska Time 21) Alaska Time - Alaska panhandle 22) Alaska Time - Alaska panhandle neck 23) Alaska Time - west Alaska 24) Aleutian Islands 25) Hawaii #? 16 The following information has been given: United States Mountain Time - south Idaho & east Oregon Therefore TZ='America/Boise' will be used. Local time is now: Wed Feb 8 14:34:44 MST 2006. Universal Time is now: Wed Feb 8 21:34:44 UTC 2006. Is the above information OK? 1) Yes 2) No #? 1 You can make this change permanent for yourself by appending the line TZ='America/Boise'; 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/Boise