The online Bangladesh newspaper bdnews24.com repeatedly abbreviates Bangladesh Standard Time as BdST, as opposed to the BDT abbreviation in the current Asia file of the tzdata. For example, the article at http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2009/12/31/2010-new-decade-cheered-in, (dated 2010-01-01) states in part, "Clocks went back at 11:59pm on Thursday night--rather than midnight--to restore Bangladesh Standard Time (BdST), GMT+6." I found many similar examples in a search for BdST within the site. Searches for BdDT and BdT yielded nothing. A search for BDT yields many references to their currency, not their time. I searched also for BST and found it referring to Bangladesh Standard Time in articles from about seven or eight years ago, while in articles from the current decade it seems to be referring only to British Summer Time. Hank W. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. Time Guru Wannabe
Thanks for the heads-up. A Google search of "Bangladesh Standard Time site:bd" from UCLA yielded the following examples: BST http://www.parliament.gov.bd/cpa/Time%20Zone.htm http://www.undp.org.bd/info/contact.html http://www.bpdb.gov.bd/download/Meghnaghat%20PQ%20Amendment%20Notice%2018.03... http://www.newstoday.com.bd/index.php?option=details&news_id=2333656&date=20... http://www.lgd.gov.bd/Tenders/PQ_Document.pdf http://www.powercell.gov.bd/index.php?page_id=250 BDST http://mail.banglanews24.com.bd/English/detailsnews.php?nssl=64b69edbdbebddf...
From this admittedly limited sample, it would appear that the most common abbreviation is "BST", with "BDST" being used by banglanews24 but being rare elsewhere.
Perhaps the TZ database should switch to "BST"?
It surprises me that there is disagreement among Bangladesh newspapers regarding the abbreviation of their own time zone. I remember before the internet newspapers (and encyclopedias) were the ultimate source for settling pub disputes. That is why I failed to confirm my finding with additional newspapers. timeanddate.com has been using BST as well. I hate ambiguous time zone designations (especially the king of them all, CST, which can mean UTC-6, UTC-5, UTC+8, UTC+9:30 or UTC+10:30), and I suspect that it was the ambiguity that drove bdnews24 to switch from using BST (which stands also for British Summer Time) to using BdST, especially since Bangladesh was once a British colony. I plan to check periodically to see if a trend is underway. Hank W. Time Lord Wannabe -----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@cs.ucla.edu] Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 22:02 To: Hank W Cc: Time Zone Group Subject: Re: [tz] Bangladesh's TZ Abbreviation Thanks for the heads-up. A Google search of "Bangladesh Standard Time site:bd" from UCLA yielded the following examples: BST http://www.parliament.gov.bd/cpa/Time%20Zone.htm http://www.undp.org.bd/info/contact.html http://www.bpdb.gov.bd/download/Meghnaghat%20PQ%20Amendment%20Notice%2018.03... http://www.newstoday.com.bd/index.php?option=details&news_id=2333656&date=20... http://www.lgd.gov.bd/Tenders/PQ_Document.pdf http://www.powercell.gov.bd/index.php?page_id=250 BDST http://mail.banglanews24.com.bd/English/detailsnews.php?nssl=64b69edbdbebddf...
From this admittedly limited sample, it would appear that the most common abbreviation is "BST", with "BDST" being used by banglanews24 but being rare elsewhere.
Perhaps the TZ database should switch to "BST"?
participants (2)
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Hank W -
Paul Eggert