Hi, > I'm in Melbourne, Australia, so, naturally, I use the Australia/Melbourne > timezone; logical, right? > But obviously not to libc6: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ date > Fri Apr 13 16:20:10 EST 2001 > > This should be AEST, seeing as that's the official timezone name (Australian > Eastern Standard Time). > > This has caused much confusion on IRC; even worse than normal! Stop the > madness!
glibc 2.3.1 timezone/australasia has a folloing note: # From Paul Eggert (2001-04-05), summarizing a long discussion about "EST" # versus "AEST" etc.: # # I see the following points of dispute: # # * How important are unique time zone abbreviations? # # Here I tend to agree with the point (most recently made by Chris # Newman) that unique abbreviations should not be essential for proper # operation of software. We have other instances of ambiguity # (e.g. "IST" denoting both "Israel Standard Time" and "Indian # Standard Time"), and they are not likely to go away any time soon. # In the old days, some software mistakenly relied on unique # abbreviations, but this is becoming less true with time, and I don't # think it's that important to cater to such software these days. # # On the other hand, there is another motivation for unambiguous # abbreviations: it cuts down on human confusion. This is # particularly true for Australia, where "EST" can mean one thing for # time T and a different thing for time T plus 1 second. # # * Does the relevant legislation indicate which abbreviations should be used? # # Here I tend to think that things are a mess, just as they are in # many other countries. We Americans are currently disagreeing about # which abbreviation to use for the newly legislated Chamorro Standard # Time, for example. # # Personally, I would prefer to use common practice; I would like to # refer to legislation only for examples of common practice, or as a # tiebreaker. # # * Do Australians more often use "Eastern Daylight Time" or "Eastern # Summer Time"? Do they typically prefix the time zone names with # the word "Australian"? # # My own impression is that both "Daylight Time" and "Summer Time" are # common and are widely understood, but that "Summer Time" is more # popular; and that the leading "A" is also common but is omitted more # often than not. 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 # # Here "Summer" seems quite a bit more popular than "Daylight", # particularly when we know the time zone is Australian and not US, # say. The "Australian" prefix seems to be popular for Eastern Summer # Time, but unpopular for Eastern Daylight Time. # # 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 # 18,263 "AEST" and domain:au # 10,416 "AEDT" and domain:au # # 14,538 "CST" and domain:au # 5,728 "CDT" and domain:au # 176 "ACST" and domain:au # 29 "ACDT" and domain:au # # 7,539 "WST" and domain:au # 68 "AWST" and domain:au # # This data suggest that Australians tend to omit the "A" prefix in # practice. The situation for "ST" versus "DT" is less clear, given # the ambiguities involved. # # * How do Australians feel about the abbreviations in the tz database? # # If you just count Australians on this list, I count 2 in favor and 3 # against. One of the "against" votes (David Keegel) counseled delay, # saying that both AEST/AEDT and EST/EST are widely used and # understood in Australia. So the result of their long discussions, it does not become "AEST". AEST is not common even in Australia from their search result. So I can't accept your bug report because upstream and the majority of Australian do not use AEST. I shall close this bug unless you have strong reason to keep opening. Regards, -- gotom
