FW: Australian DST abbreviations causing business problems - still

I'm forwarding this message from Mick Johnston, who is not on the time zone mailing list. Those of you who are on the list, please direct replies appropriately. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Mick Johnston [mailto:Mick.Johnston@coles.com.au] Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 1:42 To: 'tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov' Subject: Australian DST abbreviations causing business problems - still It's well past time the Australian 'Daylight Saving Time' abbreviations were updated to reflect the current terms and usage. Comments posted previously in the 'australasia' file are outdated and wrong and have been causing lots of problems for years. You don't have to take my word for this. Although most of the URLs identified in the file are not official sites and Daylight Saving Time is legislated by state governments, the exemplary abbreviations are displayed at the Australian federal government website at <http://www.australia.gov.au/Time#daylightsaving> as at 26/8/08. Here is the important bit: Quote: Where daylight saving is being observed: * AEST becomes Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +11. * ACST becomes Australian Central Daylight Time (ACDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +10 ½. * AWST becomes Australian Western Daylight Time (AWDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +9. " Unquote: The abbreviations AEDT, ACDT and AWDT are commonly shortened to EDT, CDT and WDT. Is there really a problem? Yes. I work for a national retail company that makes deliveries across the country. Here is just one example of the sorts of problems we face. Queensland don't have Daylight Saving Time. New South Wales (across the border from Queensland) do have Daylight Saving Time. Due to the fact that the Olsen data uses EST for both 'Eastern Summer Time' (New South Wales) and 'Eastern Standard Time' (Queensland), a delivery from New South Wales to Queensland can have a pickup time of 10.30am EST and a delivery time of 10.00am EST. We like to be efficient but we're not that good. System users only see the EST and get horribly confused. If the problem impacts businesses, then why don't they use their own time zone tables? It's not that simple. It's quite common today to find systems (like ours) that are purchased on an enterprise licence basis from a large international company. It could be difficult to get the company to change the base software product. Also, it's common for software products to run on standard operating systems such as the AIX flavour of Unix, and for the software products to use whatever time zone information is applied by the operating system. Try getting the operating system vendor to change their software and they'll simply tell you it's based on the Olsen updates. Then why hasn't the table been changed already? To answer this question, I need to address some of the comments previously made in the 'australasia' file. The first comment on this subject in the file was made by John Mackin back in 1991: JM:" We in Australia have _never_ referred to DST as `daylight' time. It is called `summer' time." MJ: This comment is more than 17 years old and horribly outdated. I have lived in Australia all my life and have been supporting systems here since well before 1991. Most Australians simply use the term 'Daylight Saving Time'. It's uncommon outside the business environment to use any other term. In business and government, Australians recognized the problems associated with ambiguous abbreviations a long time ago and have generally adopted the 'EDT' form. Various federal government websites (although not official), in an attempt to encourage uniformity, have been displaying the newer abbreviations for some time. See <http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/daysavtm.shtml> <http://www.australia.gov.au/Time#daylightsaving> Paul Eggert wrote an interesting post in 2001 that needs to be addressed. PE: "My own impression is that both "Daylight Time" and "Summer Time" are common and are widely understood, but that "Summer Time" is more popular;" MJ: Based on my day-to-day observations and discussions with people across states, most Australians now don't use the term 'Eastern Summer Time'. PE: "I just used AltaVista advanced search and got the following count of page hits: 1,103 "Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au 971 "Australian Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au 613 "Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au 127 "Australian Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au" MJ: I just googled (26/8/08) similar searches based on an "Australia only" search and my results were: 30,500 - "eastern daylight time" 5,640 - "eastern summer time" PE: "For abbreviations, tools like AltaVista are less useful because of ambiguity. Many hits are not really time zones, unfortunately, and many hits denote US time zones and not Australian ones. But here are the hit counts anyway: 161,304 "EST" and domain:au 25,156 "EDT" and domain:au" MJ: I agree with your comments, which means the figures are totally inaccurate. File Changes: Due to the fact that the file forms part of the JTZU (Java Time Zone Updates) provided by the operating system vendor, I am unable to create and test proposed changes. Also, there are quite a few changes required and I don't want to spend hours making these changes if they're not going to be applied. I ask for your advice on how to proceed with this. I am happy to work with you to produce a complete set of revised rules if you decide to go ahead with this proposal. We will need to change Aus, AW, AS, AT, AV and AN rules and their corresponding zone formats to use the 'E%sT' format. Thanks for your time and assistance Mick Johnston Dept: CGL - IT ES Supply Chain * L4 Bourke St. Melbourne (ILS Support) * (03) 9635 4457 This email and any attachments may contain privileged and confidential information and are intended for the named addressee only. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender and delete this e-mail immediately. Any confidentiality, privilege or copyright is not waived or lost because this e-mail has been sent to you in error. It is your responsibility to check this e-mail and any attachments for viruses. No warranty is made that this material is free from computer virus or any other defect or error. Any loss/damage incurred by using this material is not the sender's responsibility. The sender's entire liability will be limited to resupplying the material.

First, it must be said that any computer system relying on unique alphabetic abbreviations for time zones is inherently broken. As <http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm> says, Alphabetic time zone abbreviations should not be used as unique identifiers for UTC offsets as they are ambiguous in practice. For example, "EST" denotes 5 hours behind UTC in English-speaking North America, but it denotes 10 or 11 hours ahead of UTC in Australia; and French-speaking North Americans prefer "HNE" to "EST". One can easily construct other examples, e.g., "IST" for standard time in either India or Israel. That being said, I agree with you that the phrase "Eastern Daylight Time" have gained popularity, compared to "Eastern Summer Time", in Australia, since my 2001 posting. Using AltaVista advanced search, here's what I get today compared to 2001: 2001 2008 1,103 2,820 "Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au 971 915 "Australian Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au 613 73,200 "Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au 127 68,200 "Australian Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au However, the tz database doesn't care about spelled-out names; it cares about abbreviations. For abbreviations (which is all the tz database cares about) it's a bit harder to use Google or Altavista. For me, Google returns 383,000 hits for "AEDT site:au" and 354,000 for "EDT site:au"; many of the latter are false matches, I suppose. I'm not a big fan of change for change's sake; once the database is one way I like to leave it alone. For phrases, the new statistics seem to be quite strong; for whatever reason, Australians seem to be voting with their feet (or fingers) and are adopting American terminology with an "Australian", when the time zone names are spelled out. For abbreviations, it's not clear whether "AEDT" or "EDT" is more common, though I suppose "AEDT" has a slight edge. I'd like to hear more from Australian correspondents on this before thinking about specific changes, though.

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 4:23 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
First, it must be said that any computer system relying on unique alphabetic abbreviations for time zones is inherently broken. As <http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm> says,
Alphabetic time zone abbreviations should not be used as unique identifiers for UTC offsets as they are ambiguous in practice. For example, "EST" denotes 5 hours behind UTC in English-speaking North America, but it denotes 10 or 11 hours ahead of UTC in Australia; and French-speaking North Americans prefer "HNE" to "EST".
One can easily construct other examples, e.g., "IST" for standard time in either India or Israel.
This doesn't apply to the posters arguments, where it is *people* who are being confused. I don't know if any of the other constructed examples are analogous either - in Australia you can take a few steps and be in another time zone with the same abbreviation. The other constructed examples involve crossing several international borders.
I'm not a big fan of change for change's sake; once the database is one way I like to leave it alone. For phrases, the new statistics seem to be quite strong; for whatever reason, Australians seem to be voting with their feet (or fingers) and are adopting American terminology with an "Australian", when the time zone names are spelled out. For abbreviations, it's not clear whether "AEDT" or "EDT" is more common, though I suppose "AEDT" has a slight edge.
I'd like to hear more from Australian correspondents on this before thinking about specific changes, though.
AEDT and AEST please if I count (I'm now expat). Sure, software that assumes time zone abbreviations are unique is broken but that is irrelevant if we have to use it and it isn't going to be fixed. Workarounds are common, and I imagine painful if you need to support systems across state boundaries which thankfully I didn't. I opened a bug like this on Zope2 in 2003, where this bug was so tightly bound to the design and so few people interested in working on it (only Australians affected in reality, despite it theoretically being an issue elsewhere) that it still hasn't been fixed. All the Australian Zope2 and Plone sites need to use workarounds. -- Stuart Bishop <stuart@stuartbishop.net> http://www.stuartbishop.net/

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
For abbreviations, it's not clear whether "AEDT" or "EDT" is more common, though I suppose "AEDT" has a slight edge.
I'd like to hear more from Australian correspondents on this before thinking about specific changes, though.
A federal government web site (eg. http://www.australia.gov.au/Time) is not authoritative as the time in states is strictly a right of the states. The terms 'summer time' and 'daylight saving time' are widely used. 'Australian' as a prefix would be very unusual, as it is commonly understood. Abbreviations typically omit the 'A'. Example: "EST denotes Eastern Standard Time. Summertime or daylight saving time is commonly expressed as EDST (eastern daylight saving time)." Reference: http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/Lawlink/cru/ll_cru.nsf/pages/cru_daylightsavin... My guess would be that AEDT is becoming more prevalent on web sites which are built using systems trying to cover global time zones (eg. as a dateline in a news story). Regards, Eric Ulevik

On 2008-08-27, Eric Ulevik wrote:
On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 7:23 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
For abbreviations, it's not clear whether "AEDT" or "EDT" is more common, though I suppose "AEDT" has a slight edge.
I'd like to hear more from Australian correspondents on this before thinking about specific changes, though.
A federal government web site (eg. http://www.australia.gov.au/Time) is not authoritative as the time in states is strictly a right of the states.
The terms 'summer time' and 'daylight saving time' are widely used. 'Australian' as a prefix would be very unusual, as it is commonly understood. Abbreviations typically omit the 'A'.
Example:
"EST denotes Eastern Standard Time. Summertime or daylight saving time is commonly expressed as EDST (eastern daylight saving time)."
Reference:
http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/Lawlink/cru/ll_cru.nsf/pages/cru_daylightsavin...
My guess would be that AEDT is becoming more prevalent on web sites which are built using systems trying to cover global time zones (eg. as a dateline in a news story).
As an Australian who has battled this issue for years, I am convinced that there is absolutely NO useful answer to alphabetic abbreviations for Australian time zones. This past local summer, I had to deal with Australian websites that used AEST to mean "Australian Eastern Standard Time" and "Australian Eastern Summer Time". In other words, whatever people might like to think, these abbreviations mean nothing unless they can be disambiguated by other context. Arguing about changes, at least until such time as the national government decides to take control of this (which I think most unlikely), is really a waste of bits. If you care, you have to use numeric time zone indicators. Nothing else has any reliable meaning. Greg

Paul Eggert wrote:
I'd like to hear more from Australian correspondents on this before thinking about specific changes, though.
FYI, a request backing the use of AEST/AEDT has been opened in Red Hat bugzilla: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478566 Thanks, PM

Petr Machata <pmachata <at> redhat.com> writes:
Paul Eggert wrote:
I'd like to hear more from Australian correspondents on this before thinking about specific changes, though.
FYI, a request backing the use of AEST/AEDT has been opened in Red Hat bugzilla: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478566
Thanks, PM
Speaking as the person who opened this bug I'd like to make the following points: In the short time I have been in Australia (read: a little over 2 months) I have not heard of anyone refer to "Eastern Summer Time" it has always been a form of AXYT where X is a choice of W,C,E and y is either S and D. To me, the output of: [njones@njones ~]$ TZ="Australia/Brisbane" date Thu Jan 1 13:44:55 EST 2009 [njones@njones ~]$ TZ="Australia/Sydney" date Thu Jan 1 14:45:01 EST 2009 Is just confusing, I don't care about America using 'EST' as well (although that does become confusing at times) I just think it's bad. For instance, there is a town on the border of NSW and Queensland (NSW has DST, Queensland doesn't), apparently the state border runs through the middle of one of the streets, which would be confusing enough, but if your saying to someone (think output from a web script) "It'll be delievered by 5PM EST" it just doesn't make sense. I'll also point out a few examples for you: http://servicestatus.tpg.com.au/index.php?category=19&timeframe=future - Nation Wide ISP, states the outage time as "Outage Started: Wednesday 14 January 2009, 4:00 AM AEDST" - can't get confused, heck AEDST is really overkill, but at least I know what time they are talking about. Several major websites/TV stations use AEST/AEDT, i.e. Whirlpool, Nine Network, Seven Network, TEN Network (I think). I think the main reason you see so many "EST" results in Google is because it's a failed method for looking at this stuff, because it's possible you'll catch AEST, and your likely to catch linux users that refer to the output from 'date' in scripts/text/etc. As for the different states, most States don't specify what they want Time Zones to be called, so the Federal word (i.e. australia.gov.au) should be taken on this (with except of NSW). - Nigel

Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 12:33:51 +0000 (UTC) From: Nigel Jones <nigjones@redhat.com> Message-ID: <loom.20090105T120714-874@post.gmane.org> | For instance, there is a town on the border of NSW and Queensland | (NSW has DST, Actually, they (NSW) have summer time. And that's Coolangatta (Qld) / Tweed Heads (NSW) - I used to live just near there (20 mins up the Qld coast). | apparently the state border runs through the middle of one | of the streets, Not quite, but it isn't too bad of a description (it's a bit more than the width of a (normal) street that separates the two towns, you can easily walk from one to the other, but if you were driving you'd park in the town you intended to be shopping, or whatever, not the other). The border for most practical purposes (like insect control and the like) is a little further south into NSW. | which would be confusing enough, Of course, differing timezones across borders (which occurs in many places) always causes problems, differing summer time rules, which occurs less frequently, but does occur in other jurisdictions just makes things a little worse. But people have been coping with this for many years now. | but if your saying to someone | (think output from a web script) "It'll be delievered by 5PM EST" it just | doesn't make sense. But no-one actually says that, they're not that stupid, and understand the problem. And if you're making a web site that announces something like that you'd get it fixed real soon (if you're promising anything where the hour is going to make a huge difference, you'd probably be saying "delivered within 30 minutes" anyway, and a good website would be using the browser's time localisation functions to print the time in whatever the user's local timezone is in, rather than the server's (the server may be in some entirely different timezone after all, perhaps in an entirely different country, the internet is good like that). | As for the different states, most States don't specify what | they want Time Zones to be called, Actually they do, you just haven't done the research to find out. | so the Federal word (i.e. australia.gov.au) should be taken on | this (with except of NSW). I can't imagine why you think NSW should be different from every other state (except perhaps that might be where you moved to, and the state about which you have more information). But for Vic, go look for the Summer Time Act. Aside from the commonwealth territories, the commonwealth govt (federal govt) has no power over the time at all (In Aust, the constitution sets out exactly what the commonwealth govt has power over, and "time" isn't in the list - aside from that, it can be referred powers by the states, but again, time is not on that list either). As for what you're requesting, the 'A' on he front makes some kind of sense, they are after all Australian zones - it makes exactly the same amount of sense as calling the timezone of New York USEST (or NAEST), and if one is to be changed, both should be to be consistent. The D in the middle makes no sense at all, Australia has Summer Time, the very concept "Daylight Saving" is absurd (there's no way to save daylight, what summer time intends, successful or not, is energy saving, not daylight saving). Fortunately, while not generally known for being very clever, the various Aust state govts were never so stupid as to believe that daylight could be saved. Rather, they just adjusted the timezone in summer, and called it Summer Time. I have always assumed that the common abbreviation (EST for standard time, and EST for summer time) was a very deliberate choice, chosen so that if it ever was appropriate to specify a time with an abbreviated zone name, then the time specified would apply year around, which is almost always what is intended (as in things like parking regulations, liquor licensing regulations, ...) kre

Nigel Jones <nigjones@redhat.com> writes:
I think the main reason you see so many "EST" results in Google is because it's a failed method for looking at this stuff, because it's possible you'll catch AEST, and your likely to catch linux users that refer to the output from 'date' in scripts/text/etc.
Certainly Google searches on this topic need to be viewed with a good deal of salt. That being said, here's another data point. The Google query "WST CST EST site:au" reports about 4,650 matches, almost all of which are about Australian time zones. The corresponding query "AWST ACST AEST site:au" reports 675 matches, again, almost all about Australian time zones. This query indicates that, within Australia, time zone abbreviations without the leading "A" are considerably more popular than abbreviations with the leading "A". In looking through the matches, one can easily find sources to support all sorts of abbreviations, both from the government and from major private organizations. There really does not appear to be a consensus within Australia over what the abbreviations should be. Here are some examples: "Australia has three time zones. These are called Eastern Standard Time (EST), Central Standard Time (CST) and Western Standard Time (WST)--sometimes called Western Australian Time. These zones are sometimes referred to as AEST, ACST and AWST respectively where the prefix refers to Australia. " -- Parliament of Australia, Dept. of Parliamentary Services <http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RN/2006-07/07rn13.htm> "Within Australia DST across the three time zones is generally denoted by * EDT - Australian Eastern Daylight Time * CDT - Australian Central Daylight Time * WDT - Australian Western Daylight Time " -- Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology <http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/daysavtm.shtml> "Australian Eastern Standard Time (EST) Australian Central Standard Time (CST) Australian Western Standard Time (WST) Australian Eastern Summer Time (EDT) Australian Central Summer Time (CDT) " -- Australian Government, Geoscience Australia <http://www.ga.gov.au/bin/gazmap_moonrise> "The outage will commence at 2:00 am Eastern Standard Summer Time (ESST) until 3:00 am Eastern Standard Time (EST). " -- Australian Customs Service <http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=5725&t=icsPostList&formMode=single...> "NSW legislation does not specify abbreviations for standard or summer time. EST denotes Eastern Standard Time. Summertime or daylight saving time is commonly expressed as EDST (eastern daylight saving time). " -- NSW Attorney General's Department <http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/Lawlink/cru/ll_cru.nsf/pages/cru_daylightsavin...> "All times in this schedule are in Australian Eastern Standard Time: add 1 hour to get Eastern Summer Time (EST). " -- Australia Telescope National Facility, Parkes Observatory <http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/observing/schedules/old_schedules/oct00sch_v...>

Leaving EST as it is when it can mean Standard or Summer time or Australian Eastern or US Eastern is just propogating ambiguity. Instead of drifting along with an ambiguous consensus, why dont we show some leadership and set an unambigous standard. If the timezone database has global reach, a decision here is going to create a new "consensus". Maybe the large number of Google EST hits is just a result of the current timezone database. If so, all the consensus we're seeing could just be people using what's given to them. Another leadership option is to engage the government bodies listed below and bring them onboard. With a bit of dialog we might be able to agree on an unambiguous standard. -----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU] Sent: Tuesday, 6 January 2009 9:31 AM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Cc: Nigel Jones Subject: Re: FW: Australian DST abbreviations causing business problems - still Nigel Jones <nigjones@redhat.com> writes:
I think the main reason you see so many "EST" results in Google is because it's a failed method for looking at this stuff, because it's possible you'll catch AEST, and your likely to catch linux users that refer to the output from 'date' in scripts/text/etc.
Certainly Google searches on this topic need to be viewed with a good deal of salt. That being said, here's another data point. The Google query "WST CST EST site:au" reports about 4,650 matches, almost all of which are about Australian time zones. The corresponding query "AWST ACST AEST site:au" reports 675 matches, again, almost all about Australian time zones. This query indicates that, within Australia, time zone abbreviations without the leading "A" are considerably more popular than abbreviations with the leading "A". In looking through the matches, one can easily find sources to support all sorts of abbreviations, both from the government and from major private organizations. There really does not appear to be a consensus within Australia over what the abbreviations should be. Here are some examples: "Australia has three time zones. These are called Eastern Standard Time (EST), Central Standard Time (CST) and Western Standard Time (WST)--sometimes called Western Australian Time. These zones are sometimes referred to as AEST, ACST and AWST respectively where the prefix refers to Australia. " -- Parliament of Australia, Dept. of Parliamentary Services <http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RN/2006-07/07rn13.htm> "Within Australia DST across the three time zones is generally denoted by * EDT - Australian Eastern Daylight Time * CDT - Australian Central Daylight Time * WDT - Australian Western Daylight Time " -- Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology <http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/daysavtm.shtml> "Australian Eastern Standard Time (EST) Australian Central Standard Time (CST) Australian Western Standard Time (WST) Australian Eastern Summer Time (EDT) Australian Central Summer Time (CDT) " -- Australian Government, Geoscience Australia <http://www.ga.gov.au/bin/gazmap_moonrise> "The outage will commence at 2:00 am Eastern Standard Summer Time (ESST) until 3:00 am Eastern Standard Time (EST). " -- Australian Customs Service <http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=5725&t=icsPostList&formMode=s inglePost&postId=105> "NSW legislation does not specify abbreviations for standard or summer time. EST denotes Eastern Standard Time. Summertime or daylight saving time is commonly expressed as EDST (eastern daylight saving time). " -- NSW Attorney General's Department <http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/Lawlink/cru/ll_cru.nsf/pages/cru_daylight saving> "All times in this schedule are in Australian Eastern Standard Time: add 1 hour to get Eastern Summer Time (EST). " -- Australia Telescope National Facility, Parkes Observatory <http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/observing/schedules/old_schedules/oct00 sch_v2.html> -- This message and any attachments are confidential, proprietary, and may be privileged. If this message was misdirected, Barclays Global Investors (BGI) does not waive any confidentiality or privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify us immediately and destroy the message without disclosing its contents to anyone. Any distribution, use or copying of this e-mail or the information it contains by other than an intended recipient is unauthorized. The views and opinions expressed in this e-mail message are the author's own and may not reflect the views and opinions of BGI, unless the author is authorized by BGI to express such views or opinions on its behalf. All email sent to or from this address is subject to electronic storage and review by BGI. Although BGI operates anti-virus programs, it does not accept responsibility for any damage whatsoever caused by viruses being passed.

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Burns, Jamie BGI SYD < Jamie.Burns@barclaysglobal.com> wrote:
Leaving EST as it is when it can mean Standard or Summer time or Australian Eastern or US Eastern is just propogating ambiguity.
Instead of drifting along with an ambiguous consensus, why dont we show some leadership and set an unambigous standard. [... engage government ... ]
Different locations in Eastern Australia have varied interpretations of summer time (eg. start/end dates, amount of clock shifts). To avoid ambiguity, use an explicit UTC offset (UTC+11) or specify a location ('Australia/Sydney'). In my view, the tz database should record existing practice rather than trying to promote new standards. In any case, engaging the relevant governments is likely to be difficult. Daylight savings is quite controversial in parts of Australia. For example, a new political party was founded in 2008 to promote adoption of daylight savings for south-east Queensland. Reference: http://ds4seq.com/ Regards, Eric Ulevik

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Eric Ulevik <eulevik@gmail.com> wrote:
Different locations in Eastern Australia have varied interpretations of summer time (eg. start/end dates, amount of clock shifts). To avoid ambiguity, use an explicit UTC offset (UTC+11) or specify a location ('Australia/Sydney'). In my view, the tz database should record existing practice rather than trying to promote new standards. In any case, engaging the relevant governments is likely to be difficult. Daylight savings is quite controversial in parts of Australia. For example, a new political party was founded in 2008 to promote adoption of daylight savings for south-east Queensland. Reference: http://ds4seq.com/
I'm not sure how this is relevant to the current situation where the abbreviation used for standard time is the same as the abbreviation used for daylight savings time. People already are using a location like Australia/Sydney, and abolishing daylight savings altogether in one state doesn't resolve the issue - it just makes it worse as the clocks will be out of sync between states for a longer part of the year whilst sharing the same timezone abbreviation. I don't think I have heard an argument *for* the status quo and plenty against. I expect there are some implicit backwards compatibility concerns, likely mythical, and possibly some people enjoy the pain. There appears to be no standard for Australian timezone abbreviations apart from the one created by this database, so why should this database perpetuate a confusing and difficult standard? -- Stuart Bishop <stuart@stuartbishop.net> http://www.stuartbishop.net/

A potential lesson from working on Cuban time earlier this year: surveying computer time stamps tells us what the software and data that's most in use yields, not necessarily what reality is. Getting it right for Cuba involved listening to a Havana radio station (albeit over the Internet). With Australian summer impending, monitoring of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other sources may be in order. --ado

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 1:17 AM, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] <olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov> wrote:
With Australian summer impending, monitoring of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other sources may be in order.
A good source for reliable time reports is 'ABC NewsRadio'. This broadcaster reports local time regularly for each major Australian time zone. The length of these reports has previously increased significantly around DST transitions, due to the increased number of different clock times. They stream online at http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/ Regards, Eric Ulevik

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Eric Ulevik <eulevik@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 1:17 AM, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] <olsona@dc37a.nci.nih.gov> wrote:
With Australian summer impending, monitoring of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other sources may be in order. A good source for reliable time reports is 'ABC NewsRadio'.
ABC NewsRadio have been referring to 'Eastern Standard Time' and 'Eastern Summer Time'.
participants (9)
-
Burns, Jamie BGI SYD
-
Eric Ulevik
-
Greg Black
-
Nigel Jones
-
Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]
-
Paul Eggert
-
Petr Machata
-
Robert Elz
-
Stuart Bishop