Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 17:02:05 +0100 (BST) From: Dave Kelly <dkelly@lhr-sys.DHL.COM> Can you offer any guidelines on the allocation of canonical names to these futures? For the names I mentioned (e.g. `Europe/Paris'), the guidelines are in the `africa' file in the tz distribution. Look for ``Here are the general rules I used for choosing location names''. This is an admittedly an odd place for the guidelines; they should get moved someday. "CST" is used in China/Australia/US. What would you recommend as the most common set? But now you seem to be asking about time zone abbreviations. This is a different issue. If you're worried about these abbreviations, then the list that I gave you is too small, and more work would have to be done. For example, computers in Singapore generally use the abbreviation `SGT' for ``Singapore Time'', whereas those in China generally use `CST' for ``China Standard Time''; but the list I sent you had just one entry `Asia/Shanghai' that covers both locations, since they're both 8 hours ahead of UTC all year. The Asia/Shanghai entry also covers many other locations that are always 8 hours ahead of UTC, ranging from Asia/Ishigaki (which uses `CST') to Antarctica/Casey (which uses `WST'). I assume that futures with the same UTC offsets but with different daylight savings time change dates are considered to be distinct by the script? Yes.