I suggested a completely backward compatible approach.

Downstream consumers can have a form of the data that looks as it does now.

The argument we are supposedly trying to make is that NOBODY should be presenting these names to users - they should be using the tzid as a key to a localized lookup so UI wise there's no difference. I don't think we can use 'misuse' of those names as a reason not to change.

There is also the point that some are reluctant to use the Olson data at least because it's tied to politically sensitive names. Having the originators maintain a UID at least satisfies that problem.

On Oct 4, 2018, at 12:35, John Haxby <john.haxby@oracle.com> wrote:

I think, even so, this will not fix the problem.  Instead of complaining about the Europe/Kiev name, they'll be complaining about the spelling of the mapping from an opaque identifier to Europe/Kiev.

Exactly. At *some* point in the chain, these zones need to get turned into geographical names that people can recognize. In some regions, that naming process is fraught with dispute and emotion; unfortunately, due to the very nature of what tzdb is and does, we are never going to be free from that aspect. Thus, changing the current identifiers would merely add confusion for users and complexity to the code without addressing the essence of the issue.

The point here is to distance this group that maintains the zone data from some other group that does localization. With a little care most consumers of the data won't see the difference.

That cartoon from Xkcd posted here last week [https://xkcd.com/2050/] somehow feels relevant…  :)

Cheers!

|----------------------------------------------------------------------|

| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. |              Chief Developer             |

|                           |              Paravel Systems             |

|----------------------------------------------------------------------|

|          A room without books is like a body without a soul.         |

|                                         -- Cicero                    |

|----------------------------------------------------------------------|