Markus wrote:
The time zone string CET or MET is never parsed by any software, because in all applications (e-mail, news, etc.) the time format standards require that a numeric local time - UTC offset is also provided (e.g., required by RFC822 except for US names) and the numeric value is then used. Therefore, MET->CET is no compatibility problem.
That seems quite reasonable. A formal scheme is what I expect when handling time zones (myself or by application).
Consequently: Only humans have to recognize the time zone abbreviation and it definitely does not make sense here to use one that does not follow common practice (Langenscheid, PTB, SkyTV, CNN, etc.).
That's the point, humans should be provided a user-friendly naming scheme. But I cannot second your conclusions. The US time zone "names" are very strange (to me!), but I don't care - it's not my domain, I have not to use them. CNN, etc. is not what I would call common practice; in DE I hear the terms MEZ (or MET). I am not talking with the PTB, nor do I inform myself by US broadcasts. Talking about i18n: are these TZ "names" really considered a matter of international standards ? Concerning computer variable TZ, I doubt it. Concerning the definition of an international standard, I do not think that the current 3-letter TZ "names" serve for i18n-"codes"; they are neither formal nor intuitive. As posted some weeks ago, ambiguities and coincidences happen to exist, too. The Olsen DB as a quasi-standard on computers shall fulfill demands of an IS ? To come back to the user-friendliness: the three letter "names" are easily misinterpreted (from a global view); I would prefer something intuitive. Janis
As Janis.Papanagnou@PC-Plus.DE wrote:
Markus wrote:
Consequently: Only humans have to recognize the time zone abbreviation and it definitely does not make sense here to use one that does not follow common practice (Langenscheid, PTB, SkyTV, CNN, etc.).
That's the point, humans should be provided a user-friendly naming scheme. But I cannot second your conclusions. The US time zone "names" are very strange (to me!), but I don't care - it's not my domain, I have not to use them. CNN, etc. is not what I would call common practice; in DE I hear the terms MEZ (or MET). I am not talking with the PTB, nor do I inform myself by US broadcasts.
Hah! You thought i already gave up? No, only deferred... About a month ago, i started a small vote in de.comp.os.unix, that is the projected target people that will be most affected by your decision. (Btw., Markus later sent a followup letter there, and got one very interesting (from my point of view :) followup today, so people understanding German might want to read it there.) Anyway, the question i've asked the people was basically: ``Do you prefer the technically more correct term CET, the historically used MET, or don't you care?'' Note that i _did not_ intend to go into any technical debate about this, as i've indicated previously that i might agree that CET is technically more correct, but this is IMHO not the only point to consider. (Today's followup article even questions the technical correctness.) So here is the result: j@uriah 514% foreach file ( /home/vote/[A-Z]* ) foreach? printf "%10s: " `basename $file`; cat $file; tr -d ' ' < $file | wc -c foreach? end CET: X X XXx X XX 8 Egal: X X X x 4 MET: x XXXxXXX XX X XxX x XXX Xx 20 This basically indicates that your timezone name change is mostly unwelcome among those people who finally have to live with it. Go figure. (The vote ran for a period of 8 or 10 days. Given the usual traffic in de.comp.os.unix, 32 participiants aren't too bad. Needless to say, i didn't vote myself.) -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
In message <199612271001.LAA05390@uriah.heep.sax.de>, J Wunsch wrote:
As Janis.Papanagnou@PC-Plus.DE wrote:
Markus wrote:
Consequently: Only humans have to recognize the time zone abbreviation and it definitely does not make sense here to use one that does not follow common practice (Langenscheid, PTB, SkyTV, CNN, etc.).
That's the point, humans should be provided a user-friendly naming scheme. But I cannot second your conclusions. The US time zone "names" are very strange (to me!), but I don't care - it's not my domain, I have not to use them. CNN, etc. is not what I would call common practice; in DE I hear the terms MEZ (or MET). I am not talking with the PTB, nor do I inform myself by US broadcasts.
Well, CNN International as broadcasted in Europe is produced in London, and BSkyB (which uses "CET" very widely on its teletext program plans) is as the name suggest BRITISH Sky Broadcasting, so my quoted sources are very European. [And if you do not talk to PTB, then where do you eventually get your time from?]
Hah! You thought i already gave up? No, only deferred...
Same here ... ;-)
About a month ago, i started a small vote in de.comp.os.unix, that is the projected target people that will be most affected by your decision. (Btw., Markus later sent a followup letter there, and got one very interesting (from my point of view :) followup today, so people understanding German might want to read it there.)
Unfortunately, your ballot deadline ended before I was able to post my summary of the previous comp.std.internat and tz discussion there, so I did already expect that the "I have always seen MET since I know Unix, so it must be correct" opinion will dominate there. In fact, this was my own opinion before I started to look into this during this discussion. I would have liked to encourage people to look at least once into their English dictionaries before they vote. Therefore, I do not consider your ballot of very much value, as the discussion in de.comp.os.unix prior to it provided almost no background information compared to the June/July 1996 discussion in comp.std.internat and de.comp.standards. Thanks for the work, but please consider the result with a grain of salt. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue University, Indiana, USA -- email: kuhn@cs.purdue.edu
participants (3)
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J Wunsch -
Janis.Papanagnou＠pc-plus.DE -
kuhn＠cs.purdue.edu