On Jul 16, 2017, at 3:38 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
tzdb's 14-character limit is like Twitter's 140-character limit: although the exact value is a relic of antique technology, the brevity is still worthwhile.
(Except for those "tweetstorms" or whatever they're called; either 1) the limit is silly or 2) the limit isn't silly and the Universe is trying to tell you to use something other than Twitter for your long-form essay. But I digress....) Given TZIDss really shouldn't be thought of as names for human consumption - if your desktop environment uses them for that purpose in its time zone selection configuration GUI, go borrow somebody's Mac and see how Apple does it, and go forth and do likewise, even if it's a bit of work to dig up shape maps for tzdb zones - the 14-character limit might be OK.