[plug] CVS timezones

[Michael Hunt]

On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 15:41, James Devenish wrote:
> In message <1051600479.10905.32.camel at gilgal.oddsocks.net>
> on Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 03:14:39PM +0800, Michael Hunt wrote:
> > the human readable timezone format (don't know what it is
> > officially called) is the better one to use.
> 
> Well, I'd tend to disagree in general (don't know about Linux config,
> though!). I don't think it's very helpful when people go around writing
> "ring me at 8pm MST", because it really isn't a very communicative way
> of expressing time. ("MST? What's that?" "Mountain Standard Time" "Huh?"
> "In Pheonix" "Huh?" "An hour ahead of PST" "What's that?" "Huh?") Also,
> what would Queensland use? What about the Northern Territory? ACT? It
> would be better to use location-based zones for setup and configuration
> (e.g. Australian/Brisbane, Australian/Darwin, etc. -- both more
> expressive and more accurate) or use offsets in conversation (e.g. UTC+8
> -- no ambiguity there!). But you're talking about configuring Linux, so
> I should shut up.

The location based ones are used during setup and they are configured in
the way you suggest (country then nearest city/state/geographical
region). All the tz utils I wrote about allow you to configure time in
this way and this is the most intuitive method as you mention in your
reply. However in order to reduce the amount of information shown
whenever the time is displayed (i.e on the console when issuing a date
command or in a time stamp on a mail message or log file) this is
abbreviated to the relevant timezone (i.e. WST for Western Standard
Time). If you don't know the abbreviation for your timezone and then are
asked to compare that time with the time from another timezone (in all
likelihood whose abbreviation you don't know) then it does become
difficult to work out what every one means and what times you are
comparing. But mankind has for a long time being using codes and
abbreviations with sometimes only the very select elite being allowed in
and taught there meanings :-) But I am starting to digress !!!!

My original point is that while UTC offset is very precise and numerical
and easy to understand and divides the globe up into nice little pieces
of a pie the unfortunate reality is that the world's timezones don't
always work like that. Political and geographical interests means that
timezones fluctuate and throughout the year[1] and they don't always
follow the consistency and constant pattern that we and the UTC system
want to impose on them. Hence the reason for implementing the timezone
system and allowing the OS to undertake the job of keeping things in
sync by hopefully giving it enough adequate information[2] to make a
reasonable decision as to what the time should be.[3]

Michael Hunt

[1] Due to daylight saving etc. Authorities like to keep these
fluctuations to a minimum in order to reduce populace confusion and
discontent that could lead to removal of said authorities from office.
[2] Information about when time changes take place.
[3] And it is not always successful at this mainly because we have been
careless in the past with updating information about these time changes.