Ian Abbott wrote:
2. Such an abbreviation is not user friendly and even borders on offensive. A locality deserves a name!
On the positive side, at least it lets the user know how far the time zone is from UTC!
That's what 'date +%z' is for. Seriously, if there is a trend to abandon symbolic names, there is probably no use inventing a name for the newborn Asia/Tomsk zone. As can be seen from the map http://world-time-zones.ru/russia.htm the history of Tomsk time is the process of oscillations between the Omsk and Krasnoyarsk zones, so I suggest: Zone Asia/Tomsk 5:39:51 - LMT 1919 Dec 22 6:00 - OMST 1930 Jun 21 7:00 Russia OMS%sT 1991 Mar 31 2:00s 6:00 Russia OMS%sT 1992 Jan 19 2:00s 7:00 Russia OMS%sT 2002 May 1 3:00 6:00 Russia OMS%sT 2011 Mar 27 2:00s 7:00 - OMST 2014 Oct 26 2:00s 6:00 - OMST 2016 May 29 2:00s 7:00 - KRAT -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN sip:sudakov@sibptus.tomsk.ru