On 2026-07-18 13:03, Guy Harris via tz wrote:
And encourage developers to 1) not rely on "EST" in a string meaning UTC-05 etc., 2) stop
using "EST" etc. in time stamp strings and switch to UTC±N,
Good advice, and it suggests that if the US changes go through as
proposed, TZDB should follow Robert's suggestion[1] and switch North
American time zone abbreviations from the (A|E|C|M|P|AK)(D|S)T
abbreviation family to numeric abbreviations like "-04". This would help
avoid collision with longstanding practice that includes both standards
like Internet RFC 5322 and software packages galore. And we'd be
following our own advice to not generate abbreviations like "EST".
Perhaps eventually common practice would become clear and we could start
using alphabetic abbreviations again. Until things settle down, though,
numeric abbreviations would likely cause fewer problems than alphabetic
ones.
NST/NDT might need similar treatment, depending on what Newfoundland does.
HST, SST, and ChST would not need to change, though it'd be a little odd
if they were the only alphabetic US-oriented abbreviations.
[1]:
https://lists.iana.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/K36D3X4US47OB5QZQKZWRQ4GTO53W7A4/
