Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> wrote on Tue, 2 Apr 2013 at 11:19:47 -0700 in <87obdwokvw.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>:
But my point is that the specific abbreviations that are put into tzname are worthless for this purpose because they change based on whether it's currently daylight saving time, which is exactly what you don't want for
They are worthless programatically. But they are handy for humans to look at. Two simple cases: (1) I look at the Date: header and I want to know, without thinking too hard, where the originator is. (2) I can't remember if we are in daylight time or standard time so I type "date" and look at the abbreviation. The current Australian abbrevs do a poor job of both of those cases. Given that they are worthless programatically, any argument that they are based on a dead API, or that programattic consistency is required, etc., etc. is not compelling. If they are worthless to software, let's make them useful to humans, please.
As kre says, the time offset abbreviations in tzname, et al., are a bad solution to the wrong problem.
Sure, but not relevant. We don't have the power to make them go away, and even if we didn't it wouldn't be relevant to our choice of abbrevs. --jhawk@mit.edu John Hawkinson