> If CLDR doesn't like the new names,

it can continue to use the old names

It isn't that we don't "like" the new names, it's that we need the names (in zone.tab) not to change once defined. So we do exactly as you suggest, "continue to use the old names".

Mark

— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

On 03/05/2013 12:22 AM, Mark Davis ☕ wrote:
> The main issue for CLDR and other clients like it is to be able to have completely stable
> canonical identifiers. The zone.tab doesn't quite work for that,

That's fine, but that's a different issue. Identifiers are not removed
from the tz database. Occasionally zones are renamed, but the
old names continue to work. If CLDR doesn't like the new names,
it can continue to use the old names.

Some of the discussion on the ECMA mailing list seems to be assuming
that tz names can "disappear", or that the Zone names are "unstable",
but this assumption is incorrect -- unless by "unstable" one means
that names are sometimes *added* to the database.