Daylist savings letter modifiers for zone format in Australia
Hi, This is my first post in this mailing list so please redirect me to an etiquette page if I do anything wrong :) I am using the tzdata2008b.tar.gz distribution from the 24/03/2008. Using the Australia/Melbourne zone, it seems to imply that the format of the zone is EST regardless whether I am in day light savings or not. According to this article [http://www.australia.gov.au/Time_Zones] the format should be AEST except during daylight savings in which case it is AEDT. It also indicates that there may be problems with all the zones in the Australian region. So a couple of questions: 1. What is the best way for me / us to verify this is right? Is that fact that it is on a government web-site enough? 2. If this is correct what is the best way to update the data file. I am more than happy to change it and send back for review and incorporation if required / appropriate. If you need any more from me please let me know. Thanks and kind regards Mark Rodrigues http://www.codeplex.com/zoneinfo
Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 15:10:31 +1000 From: "Mark Rodrigues" <markjrodrigues@hotmail.com> Message-ID: <BAY113-DAV4CB0E58BAA9FD2E29D4BED6DB0@phx.gbl> <002101c8ab49$ad84e830$088eb890$@com> | 1. What is the best way for me / us to verify this is right? Is that fact | that it is on a government web-site enough? The best thing for you to do would be to visit a law library in Melbourne (Melbourne and Monash universities certainly have them, yu could also get a copy of the legislation from the gpvt Printers) and look up the Summer Time Act (1974 ??) and its ammendments, and report back to the list what it says the time zones are called. Time in Australia is defined by state (or territory) legislation, since you're in Melbourne, you have the perfect opportunity to find the original source. Of course, if you prefer, you could also do it the easy way and just look at a copy of the legislation on the web. kre
Hi, Mark -- Replying to your "tz" list posting:
Using the Australia/Melbourne zone, it seems to imply that the format of the zone is EST regardless whether I am in day light savings or not.
My understanding has always been that the only truly official, legally blessed abbreviations for Australian time zones are EST, CST, and WST -- without any caring for confusion between summer (daylight saving) and non-summer time, and also without regard for confusion with similarly named and abbreviated time zones in North America. The abbreviations A{E,C,W}{S,D}T have been widely used on the Internet for many years, but the time zone gurus have been reluctant to use them because they've never been truly "official" as far as anyone knew. If reliable sources can be found showing that these abbreviations are now official throughout Australia, I imagine the keepers of the tz data would be more than delighted to update the database accordingly. However, I suspect people would prefer something more authoritative than a single web page (even if that page is on a government web site) -- hence the suggestion to go look up the current state of the relevant legislation for each Australian state/territory. -- Rich Wales === Palo Alto, CA, USA === richw@richw.org http://www.richw.org === http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Richwales
On 5/2/08, Rich Wales <richw@richw.org> wrote:
The abbreviations A{E,C,W}{S,D}T have been widely used on the Internet for many years, but the time zone gurus have been reluctant to use them because they've never been truly "official" as far as anyone knew.
Hmm...I've heard just the opposite: that the abbreviations are intended to reflect popular usage regardless of what any laws say. For example, Pacific/Honolulu has "HST" for "Hawaii standard time" even though the legal name is "Hawaii-Aleutian standard time." --Bill Seymour
participants (4)
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Bill Seymour -
Mark Rodrigues -
Rich Wales -
Robert Elz