Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
Quoting Christian PERRIER (bubu...@debian.org): Hello, I need some help from Australian people. I finally settled for listing states. That seems to be the most unnderstandable option (including for foreigners who happen to arrive in AU). This will also be consistent with some other countries where I intend to do the same (done for Brazil for instance and I'm thinking about it for federal countriel such as Argentina where last minute changes in DST choices often tend to create more and more timezones (indeed tzdata entries). Listing states also has an advantage: I can reuse translations from iso-codes (countries subdivisions are included in the package as iso-3166-2). -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:59:19PM +1100, Aníbal Monsalve Salazar wrote: Commonwealth Games. In Victoria we were on a different timezone to that of the folks in New South Wales. Not really relevant, but no we weren't. NSW changed too. Hamish -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110324234259.gb32...@risingsoftware.com
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:28:18PM +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: That's indeed insane..:-). Hobart (Tasmania), Melbourne (Victoria), Sydney (NSW) and Canberra (ACT) have the *exact* same time rules (including DST). But they didn't always; and with the tendency of governments to flex their arbitrary timezone powers, they may be different again in future. Indeed, Vic and NSW only aligned themselves with Tasmania a few years back. Tasmania had longer daylight savings periods for years before. It's feasible that it will differ again in the future. I think Vic/ACT/NSW discrepancies are unlikely but it doesn't seem worth removing them to me. Hamish -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110324234114.ga32...@risingsoftware.com
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
Quoting Paul Wise (p...@debian.org): I agree with the other Australians in the thread; the east-coast timezones are currently all the same but might not be in the future so we shouldn't rely on them being the same and we should allow selection of Australia/Sydney vs Australia/Melbourne. Sure. That was an option I was considering, too. I'm just not fond of Australia/Sydney presented as a choice, I'd rather have New South-Wales. Given that the map idea is great...but just an idea which I certainly am unable to implement, and that I have to deal with what we have *now*, I hereby propose selecting states: New South-Wales Victoria Australian Capital Territory Queensland Tasmania South Australia Northern Territory Western Australia Eyre Highway Yancowinna county Lord Howe Island I will probably propose the same for some federal countries where timzeone and DST rules are set by states/provinces: Brazil and Argentina come to mind (Russia is too complicated for this to be a sane option). So could Mexico. USA and Canada are a fairly different case: the overall use of Atlantic/Eastern/Central/Moutain/Pacific is quite well known among the countries. We may just need to deal with specific exception (Navajo nation not following DST, the Indiana nightmare, etc.) I'll open separate thread for each country to avoid something too messy. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Mar 23, 2011, at 2:15 AM, Christian PERRIER wrote: I'm just not fond of Australia/Sydney presented as a choice, I'd rather have New South-Wales. For what it's worth, the timezone database (as evidenced by, among other things, the output of the tzselect command) is organized mostly in terms of country/city rather than country/larger- geographical-area. Which is not to say that the larger geographical areas get completely short-shrift in the timezone database. Look at the directory structure under /usr/share/zoneinfo for example. As I understand it, the choice of a large city in the affected geographic area is practical in two ways: 1) Individual cities are fairly unlikely to be split into two or more timezones. Larger geographical units are more likely to be split than individual cities -- all depending on unpredictable future political squabbles. 2) Most people know what their nearest large city is. They may not know the fine distinctions of past and present political divisions as applied to timezones as applied to their present location. Just one point of view from somebody who occasionally lurks on the tz mailing list. Enjoy! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/0ef9eef7-c2e0-4767-be44-846fed53d...@pobox.com
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:18:04 +0800 Paul Wise p...@debian.org wrote: this would only work for g-i not the text-based installer. The text-based installer could use the GNOME strategy of providing a search box to input your city/country and a list of possibly corresponding timezones/locales. Would you remove the 'country' question from d-i? else the timezone option would then be asking you for redundant information. kk -- Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS) Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer http://www.kgoetz.id.au No, I won't join your social networking group signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:15:20 +0100 Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org wrote: Quoting Paul Wise (p...@debian.org): I agree with the other Australians in the thread; the east-coast timezones are currently all the same but might not be in the future so we shouldn't rely on them being the same and we should allow selection of Australia/Sydney vs Australia/Melbourne. Sure. That was an option I was considering, too. I'm just not fond of Australia/Sydney presented as a choice, I'd rather have New South-Wales. Is there a particular reason for this? (Perhaps consistency, guessing by the rest of your post?) Given that the map idea is great...but just an idea which I certainly am unable to implement, and that I have to deal with what we have *now*, I hereby propose selecting states: New South-Wales No hyphen in nsw ( http://www.nsw.gov.au/ ) Victoria Australian Capital Territory Queensland Tasmania South Australia Northern Territory Western Australia Eyre Highway Yancowinna county Lord Howe Island That would work, but practically its not changing a great deal from the current setup. thanks, kk -- Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS) Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer http://www.kgoetz.id.au No, I won't join your social networking group signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:28:18 +1100 Ben Finney ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au wrote: Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: The timezone choice in D-I is supposed to be user-friendly and easy to understand for the average citizen of the said country. FWIW: the existing Australian timezone choice in D-I seems fine from the point of view of the Australians I've seen do installs (including myself). I'll agree with that - of all the parts of the installer that i've seen people step through, timezones is one that they haven't needed help with. When it comes at Australia, the choice was, up to now: [14 options] That's indeed insane..:-). Hobart (Tasmania), Melbourne (Victoria), Sydney (NSW) and Canberra (ACT) have the *exact* same time rules (including DST). There might be 14 options, but its always clear which one you want. (the capital for your state/territory or a 'special' timezone). is there a reason you feel its insane? I currently propose to offer the following choices in D-I: Victoria, ACT, NSW, Tasmania (Eastern Time, DST) Queensland (Eastern Time, no DST) South Australia (Central Time, DST) Northern Territory (Central Time, no DST) Western Australia (Western Time) Central Western Standard Time (Eucla) Lord Howe Island Do you guys think this would be understandable to the average Australian? Yes. However, please ensure that no-one working on this gets the impression this reduction in options is to be relied on; it's at the whim of government that demonstrates frequent whimsy in adding as well as reducing options. I was wondering - is the trimming to somehow benefit the d-i people, or those installing debian? I'm not sure the suggested system makes it any more obvious to people then the existing one. For most (all?) Australian states the capital is at least 50% of the population [1]. People know which capital is theirs, and there is a good chance they are in it. [1] Adelaide has 90%+ of the states population within 50km of the cbd An alternative was: Please skip this alternative :) kk -- Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS) Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer http://www.kgoetz.id.au No, I won't join your social networking group signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
Rick Thomas wrote: For what it's worth, the timezone database (as evidenced by, among other things, the output of the tzselect command) is organized mostly in terms of country/city rather than country/larger- geographical-area. This is also largely misunderstood, as often two cities with different entries in the database observe identical time zone rules today. In some cases they only differed for a week a century ago. I would not consider the TZ database or tzselect anything resembling a useful UI, although it is an interesting exercise in completism. -- see shy jo, still in his own timezone! signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Mar 23, 2011, at 1:42 PM, Joey Hess wrote: Rick Thomas wrote: For what it's worth, the timezone database (as evidenced by, among other things, the output of the tzselect command) is organized mostly in terms of country/city rather than country/larger- geographical-area. This is also largely misunderstood, as often two cities with different entries in the database observe identical time zone rules today. In some cases they only differed for a week a century ago. I would not consider the TZ database or tzselect anything resembling a useful UI, although it is an interesting exercise in completism. -- see shy jo, still in his own timezone! In that case, whatever d-i does for UI, it needs to warn folks that it may be necessary to do a dpkg-reconfigure tzdata after the install, if they care about getting the details exactly right of that week in 2006 when Australia hosted the Commonwealth Games. Call us crazy if you like, but some of us do care. Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4397de66-4e61-4f91-a081-7cf296917...@pobox.com
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
Quoting Ben Finney (ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au): Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: I'm just not fond of Australia/Sydney presented as a choice, I'd rather have New South-Wales. (Regardless of what you choose, FYI it's “New South Wales”, no hyphen.) Sure. If I finally decide to go for a list of states and territories for AU, I'll look back at the ISO-3166-2 database and use the exact wording there (which, I confirm, doesn't use hyphens, you're right). Why do you prefer that? Australia is highly urbanised; we're accustomed to “Sydney” as a stand-in for “New South Wales”. Moreover, it's very common for time zones around the world to be described by the dominant city of the region (“Tokyo time”, “London time”, etc). What makes you dislike it? Probably a feeling that maybe that, time being decided by states, it makes sense to refer to states. I agree this is somehow borderlineand I think it's at least worth taking time to think about this with the constant goal of keeping things as simple as possible (leaving dpkg-reconfigure tzdata to very very picky people). signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
Hello, I need some help from Australian people. Debian Installer includes (in tzsetup) a way to choose a timezone among multiple timezones, when users have picked a country that has more than one timezone. I'm currently working on this as things change constantly in such matters. As preliminary, please notice that the point is not giving a full choice within the gazillion of possible timezones. See dpkg-reconfigure tzdata. The timezone choice in D-I is supposed to be user-friendly and easy to understand for the average citizen of the said country. When it comes at Australia, the choice was, up to now: Lord Howe Island Hobart Melbourne Sydney Broken Hill Brisbane Lindeman Adelaide Darwin Perth Canberra Eucla Currie Yancowinna That's indeed insane..:-). Hobart (Tasmania), Melbourne (Victoria), Sydney (NSW) and Canberra (ACT) have the *exact* same time rules (including DST). Lindeman island is in Queensland and uses the same time than it. Broken Hill is only specific because, even if it's in NSW, it follows South Australia time.. Indeed, after some study, Australia (excluding outside territories that have their own ISO code anyway) has only 7 different time zones, as of 2011: 5 for the continent+Tasmania: - Eastern Time with use of DST: Victoria, NSW, ACT, Tasmania - Eastern Time withouty use of DST: Queensland - Central Time with use of DST: South Australia - Central Time without use of DST: Northern Territory - Western Time without use of DST: Western Australia 2 more specific: - Lord Howe Island - Eyre Highway (also known as Eucla) using a funky UTC+8:45. That's about 200 people, according to Wikipedia. This timezone is unofficially called Central Western I currently propose to offer the following choices in D-I: Victoria, ACT, NSW, Tasmania (Eastern Time, DST) Queensland (Eastern Time, no DST) South Australia (Central Time, DST) Northern Territory (Central Time, no DST) Western Australia (Western Time) Central Western Standard Time (Eucla) Lord Howe Island Do you guys think this would be understandable to the average Australian? Would something hurt some feelings (such as mentioning Victoria before NSW)? An alternative was: Eastern Time with DST Eastern Time without DST Central Time with DST Central Time without DST Western Time Central Western Standard Time Lord Howe Island PS: for those nitpicking folds among you, Cocos (Keeling), Christmas and Norfolk Islands as well as the three Australian Antarctic Territories are supposed to be covered by different choices when it comes at country. -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
Christian PERRIER wrote: I currently propose to offer the following choices in D-I: Victoria, ACT, NSW, Tasmania (Eastern Time, DST) Queensland (Eastern Time, no DST) South Australia (Central Time, DST) Northern Territory (Central Time, no DST) Western Australia (Western Time) Central Western Standard Time (Eucla) Lord Howe Island Do you guys think this would be understandable to the average Australian? Yes, that sounds fine. Would something hurt some feelings (such as mentioning Victoria before NSW)? No, but I live in NSW :-). An alternative was: Eastern Time with DST Eastern Time without DST Central Time with DST Central Time without DST Western Time Central Western Standard Time Lord Howe Island I prefer the former options to this one, Cheers, Erik -- -- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110323071700.436781e8.mle+deb...@mega-nerd.com
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:54:05 +0100, Christian PERRIER writes: I currently propose to offer the following choices in D-I: Victoria, ACT, NSW, Tasmania (Eastern Time, DST) Queensland (Eastern Time, no DST) South Australia (Central Time, DST) Northern Territory (Central Time, no DST) Western Australia (Western Time) Central Western Standard Time (Eucla) Lord Howe Island Do you guys think this would be understandable to the average Australian? that'll work fine. An alternative was: Eastern Time with DST Eastern Time without DST Central Time with DST Central Time without DST Western Time Central Western Standard Time Lord Howe Island not so great, because these are very uncommon. for example, you never hear eastern time being used on the radio; here (qld/nsw border) they say it's hh:mm, that's hh+1:mm in nsw when we're in that fun period of the year where there are two time zones within the reception area. regards az -- + Alexander Zangerl + DSA 42BD645D + (RSA 5B586291) Anyway the :// part is an 'emoticon' representing a man with a strip of sticky tape across his mouth. -- R. Douglas signature.asc Description: Digital Signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 09:34, Alexander Zangerl a...@debian.org wrote: not so great, because these are very uncommon. for example, you never hear eastern time being used on the radio; here (qld/nsw border) they say it's hh:mm, that's hh+1:mm in nsw when we're in that fun period of the year where there are two time zones within the reception area. Actually, I regularly hear programs being advertised as starting at (for example) 1pm eastern time or 1pm AEST when they actually mean 1pm AEDST.
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: The timezone choice in D-I is supposed to be user-friendly and easy to understand for the average citizen of the said country. FWIW: the existing Australian timezone choice in D-I seems fine from the point of view of the Australians I've seen do installs (including myself). When it comes at Australia, the choice was, up to now: Lord Howe Island Hobart Melbourne Sydney Broken Hill Brisbane Lindeman Adelaide Darwin Perth Canberra Eucla Currie Yancowinna That's indeed insane..:-). Hobart (Tasmania), Melbourne (Victoria), Sydney (NSW) and Canberra (ACT) have the *exact* same time rules (including DST). But they didn't always; and with the tendency of governments to flex their arbitrary timezone powers, they may be different again in future. People's knowledge of timezone rules tends (IME) to stick at the point where they learned about a particular change which they had to learn; it rarely gets updated. Hobart people will probably not know that Melbourne's timezone is the same now, for example. Indeed, after some study, Australia (excluding outside territories that have their own ISO code anyway) has only 7 different time zones, as of 2011: Which will likely change again in the future. We are cursed with arbitrary government intervention in timezone rules, implemented with little advance notice. I currently propose to offer the following choices in D-I: Victoria, ACT, NSW, Tasmania (Eastern Time, DST) Queensland (Eastern Time, no DST) South Australia (Central Time, DST) Northern Territory (Central Time, no DST) Western Australia (Western Time) Central Western Standard Time (Eucla) Lord Howe Island Do you guys think this would be understandable to the average Australian? Yes. However, please ensure that no-one working on this gets the impression this reduction in options is to be relied on; it's at the whim of government that demonstrates frequent whimsy in adding as well as reducing options. Would something hurt some feelings (such as mentioning Victoria before NSW)? Inter-state rivalry is not something Australians get particularly upset about; at least, not for something as inconsequential as which one gets mentioned first in a list. Maybe mention ACT first to defer to the nominal capital of the country. Or not, as you choose; I doubt anyone will be upset. An alternative was: Eastern Time with DST Eastern Time without DST Central Time with DST Central Time without DST Western Time Central Western Standard Time Lord Howe Island −1 for that. Average citizens can't be expected to know any name for their time zone that isn't their name they for the region in which they live (e.g. “Melbourne” or “Victoria”). -- \ “I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or | `\anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic.” —Albert | _o__)Einstein, unsent letter, 1955 | Ben Finney pgpqbDE3Fc8Y2.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:28:18PM +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Christian PERRIER bubu...@debian.org writes: [...] That's indeed insane..:-). Hobart (Tasmania), Melbourne (Victoria), Sydney (NSW) and Canberra (ACT) have the *exact* same time rules (including DST). But they didn't always; and with the tendency of governments to flex their arbitrary timezone powers, they may be different again in future. I fully agree with Ben. People's knowledge of timezone rules tends (IME) to stick at the point where they learned about a particular change which they had to learn; it rarely gets updated. Hobart people will probably not know that Melbourne's timezone is the same now, for example. In 2006 we had to rush to update the zoneinfo data as the Victorian government decided to have an extra week of Daylight Savings for the Commonwealth Games. In Victoria we were on a different timezone to that of the folks in New South Wales. http://wiki.debian.org/TimeZoneChanges http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/debian-au/2006-March/000289.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
I agree with the other Australians in the thread; the east-coast timezones are currently all the same but might not be in the future so we shouldn't rely on them being the same and we should allow selection of Australia/Sydney vs Australia/Melbourne. I would suggest doing what Ubuntu do for timezone locale selection; have a geographical map that you click on that picks you a timezone and probable locale bits. It could even zoom in to a specific region for selection of those weird timezones like Eyre Highway. Obviously this would only work for g-i not the text-based installer. The text-based installer could use the GNOME strategy of providing a search box to input your city/country and a list of possibly corresponding timezones/locales. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/AANLkTi=zOgYHduxP_Ewf40DfLiY=1H=vc2v451jx2...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Needed input from Australian users and developers:; choosing timezones for Australia in D-I
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:18:04AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: I agree with the other Australians in the thread; the east-coast timezones are currently all the same but might not be in the future so we shouldn't rely on them being the same and we should allow selection of Australia/Sydney vs Australia/Melbourne. I would suggest doing what Ubuntu do for timezone locale selection; have a geographical map that you click on that picks you a timezone and probable locale bits. It could even zoom in to a specific region for selection of those weird timezones like Eyre Highway. Obviously this would only work for g-i not the text-based installer. The text-based installer could use the GNOME strategy of providing a search box to input your city/country and a list of possibly corresponding timezones/locales. Then you have to maintain geographical coordinates for all those regions. And then you can get this sort of problem: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx This may not apply to selection of cities, but then if one can only select a city then it's not much of an improvement over the current list. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. - Albert Camus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110323024429.gi2...@decadent.org.uk
