"Zhe Su" <james.su@gmail.com> writes:

Unfortunately, most front ends (at least on GNU/Linux system) expose timezone identifiers like "Asia/Shanghai" to end users directly.

Then let's focus on getting those front ends fixed the way you like. Which front ends are they? The tz code ships only one front end, called tzselect, which works as shown at the end of this message. Note that at the crucial decision point, the user selects a #1 entry labeled "Beijing". So at least this front end works the way that you like. Perhaps all you need to do is to convince your distributors to switch to tzselect. Another possibility is for you to find out which front ends people are using, and fix those front ends. $ tzselect Please identify a location so that time zone rules can be set correctly. Please select a continent or ocean. 1) Africa 2) Americas 3) Antarctica 4) Arctic Ocean 5) Asia 6) Atlantic Ocean 7) Australia 8) Europe 9) Indian Ocean 10) Pacific Ocean 11) none - I want to specify the time zone using the Posix TZ format. #? 5 Please select a country. 1) Afghanistan 18) Israel 35) Palestine 2) Armenia 19) Japan 36) Philippines 3) Azerbaijan 20) Jordan 37) Qatar 4) Bahrain 21) Kazakhstan 38) Russia 5) Bangladesh 22) Korea (North) 39) Saudi Arabia 6) Bhutan 23) Korea (South) 40) Singapore 7) Brunei 24) Kuwait 41) Sri Lanka 8) Cambodia 25) Kyrgyzstan 42) Syria 9) China 26) Laos 43) Taiwan 10) Cyprus 27) Lebanon 44) Tajikistan 11) East Timor 28) Macau 45) Thailand 12) Georgia 29) Malaysia 46) Turkmenistan 13) Hong Kong 30) Mongolia 47) United Arab Emirates 14) India 31) Myanmar (Burma) 48) Uzbekistan 15) Indonesia 32) Nepal 49) Vietnam 16) Iran 33) Oman 50) Yemen 17) Iraq 34) Pakistan #? 9 Please select one of the following time zone regions. 1) east China - Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, etc. 2) Heilongjiang 3) central China - Gansu, Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan, etc. 4) Tibet & most of Xinjiang Uyghur 5) southwest Xinjiang Uyghur #? 1 The following information has been given: China east China - Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, etc. Therefore TZ='Asia/Shanghai' will be used. Local time is now: Sat Apr 22 01:03:53 CST 2006. Universal Time is now: Fri Apr 21 17:03:53 UTC 2006. Is the above information OK? 1) Yes 2) No #? 1 You can make this change permanent for yourself by appending the line TZ='Asia/Shanghai'; export TZ to the file '.profile' in your home directory; then log out and log in again. Here is that TZ value again, this time on standard output so that you can use the ./tzselect command in shell scripts: Asia/Shanghai