Paul, In your email dated May 5 you stated that the BC government is recommending the abbreviation "PacT" for Pacific Time. In the proposed patch that accompanied the email, you stated that the abbreviation "PacT" is currently being considered by the BC government. Is it a recommendation or consideration? Theses are not quite the same thing, so I would appreciate clarification as to the current status.
Do you have a public government reference for this proposal or consideration? I tried searching for references independently, but the only results I could find were archives of your May 5 mailing-list post. If there is no public reference, is the patch instead based on private correspondence or phone conversations? I also have a broader concern regarding consistency with the TZDB theory document. The theory file currently states: "Use abbreviations that are in common use among English-speakers…". It then explicitly lists the long-established North American abbreviations, and “PacT” is not among them. Introducing a new and currently unfamiliar abbreviation into the database seems difficult to reconcile with that guidance, and could create unnecessary confusion for users and downstream software. I still believe the database should strive to make it clear that BC, Yukon, and Arizona share a common time zone even if individual governments try to concoct their own ambiguous names and/or abbreviations. This is best done by sticking with the common and unambiguous abbreviation "MST". -chris On Tue, May 5, 2026 at 1:23 AM Paul Eggert via tz <[email protected]> wrote: > The BC government is considering recommending the abbreviation “PacT” > for Pacific Time as observed in British Columbia since 2026-03-09. Two > draft TZDB patches are attached that would implement this. The first > simply changes “MST” to “PacT” for timestamps starting 2026-11-01, in > line with 2026b’s temporary hack to delay this transition because the > downstream user CLDR v48.2 (2026-03-17) cannot support BC’s current > timekeeping. The second patch removes the temporary hack, adjusting TZDB > to better reflect BC’s timekeeping, in the hope that the temporary hack > is no longer needed once the abbreviation changes from “MST” to “PacT”. > > I have not installed these patches into the TZDB development repository, > as “PacT” is still under consideration. Comments are welcome as usual.
