
With the restoration of internet to Xinjiang yesterday after a ten month hiatus, I would like to make one more plea for Xinjiang Time to be included in the tz database. (Last year we discussed Xinjiang Time, a semi-official time used primarily by minority ethnic groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, as well as in some official Xinjiang Chinese language publications.) Although any proposal is better than nothing at this point, I've summarized here my preferences and my reasons. 1. That the locations be the already existing Urumqi/Asia and Kashgar/ Asia. These already exist in the database and have been the most common English spelling on the Internet and on maps for some time. (These names correspond closely to the Uyghur pronunciation and are probably more commonly used because of the autonomous region status of the area. The "q" in Urumqi is pronounced like the "ch' in English.) 2. That the name of the time zone be called Xinjiang Time, abbreviated XJT. This nomenclature corresponds word for word with the most common usage in Chinese and Uyghur, as well as all references to it I can find in English. It would therefore be immediately recognizable by users of Xinjiang Time. This would also agree with the recommendations in the Theory file.
If there is no common English abbreviation, abbreviate the English
translation of the usual phrase used by native speakers.
URUT for Urumqi Time would be another possibility as it is a recognized, perhaps more official term, but not nearly as widely used. 3. That no other location be added (especially with the same latitude and longitude) to accommodate the use of Beijing Time (also widely used in Xinjiang, esp. by close to 100% of the ethnic Han population). The reason for this is two-fold. a. It agrees with the recommendations in Theory, Urumqi being quite a bit smaller than Beijing
Use the most populous among locations in a country's time zone,
e.g. prefer `Shanghai' to `Beijing'
and by definition is redundant.
If all the clocks in a country's region have agreed since 1970,
don't bother to include more than one location
b. But perhaps more critically, it is an added difficulty to implement two zones having the same position on most GUI's. I am afraid that GUI developers would choose the more commonly used time and that Xinjiang time, although present in the tzdata would be swallowed up in the user interface. 4. And lastly, that no effort be made to link the time zone with summer time changes that happened in the rest of the country during the late eighties, as the local populace, at least to some extent, continued to use standard time. If it is, however, desirable to have a summer time, I believe the abbreviation XJST would most closely follow the recommendations of the Theory file So these, then, are my suggestions and the reasons why. Thanks for taking another look into this, -Luther PS I have been patching the tzdata for my own use as well as for a very small distribution, which I have pasted below in case it is of any use to others or in changing the official version. $ diff -c tzdata2010j/asia proposedXJT/asia *** tzdata2010j/asia 2010-05-10 21:07:27.000000000 +0800 --- proposed XJT/asia 2010-05-15 19:08:24.000000000 +0800 *************** *** 390,396 **** # Fukang, Kuitun, Kumukuli, Miquan, Qitai, and Turfan. Zone Asia/Urumqi 5:50:20 - LMT 1928 # or Urumchi 6:00 - URUT 1980 May # Urumqi Time ! 8:00 PRC C%sT # Kunlun Time # West Tibet, including Pulan, Aheqi, Shufu, Shule; # West Xinjiang, including Aksu, Atushi, Yining, Hetian, Cele, Luopu, Nileke, --- 390,396 ---- # Fukang, Kuitun, Kumukuli, Miquan, Qitai, and Turfan. Zone Asia/Urumqi 5:50:20 - LMT 1928 # or Urumchi 6:00 - URUT 1980 May # Urumqi Time ! 6:00 - XJT # Kunlun Time # West Tibet, including Pulan, Aheqi, Shufu, Shule; # West Xinjiang, including Aksu, Atushi, Yining, Hetian, Cele, Luopu, Nileke, *************** *** 462,468 **** Zone Asia/Kashgar 5:03:56 - LMT 1928 # or Kashi or Kaxgar 5:30 - KAST 1940 # Kashgar Time 5:00 - KAST 1980 May ! 8:00 PRC C%sT # From Lee Yiu Chung (2009-10-24): --- 462,468 ---- Zone Asia/Kashgar 5:03:56 - LMT 1928 # or Kashi or Kaxgar 5:30 - KAST 1940 # Kashgar Time 5:00 - KAST 1980 May ! 6:00 - XJT # From Lee Yiu Chung (2009-10-24):
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Luther Ma