Re: Time zone names (was REMINDER: CharMod Call Today)

On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Mark Davis wrote:

> have a meeting "Tuesdays at 10:00 PT" (Pacific Time), that carries more (and
> different) information than saying "Tuesdays at 10:00 GMT-08:00". For part of
> the year -- as a matter of fact, for a *majority* of the year -- it is
> "Tuesdays at 10:00 GMT-07:00". The problem is that you have to go look up
>  against the

  Well, that's why I speficically say US PST with 'S'. If this had been
when the daylight saving time is in effect, I would have written 'US PDT'.
Needless to say, always using UTC is clear and unambigous. If the wall
clock time is to be used, it can be followed by 'UTC -0800 (US PST)'
or 'UTC -0700 (US PDT)'. 'US PDT' is enclosed by parentheses because
I believe that should only be 'parenthetical'. I wouldn't expect any
'layperson' on the street to do that, but this is on I18N list.


> What would truely be useful would be if all those countries of the world that
> use summer time could standardize on two dates during the year to switch their
> clocks (e.g. 3th Sundays in March and September, near the æquinoctia). Then you

  Obviously, that doesn't work even if we put aside arising from
different climates in different regions in the _same_ hemisphere because
there are two hemisphers in a sphere :-)

> could use three appreviations to fully specify the time without needing
> to know detailed daylight conventions:

  I'm not sure what you meant by 'three appreviations'. Did you mean
things like PST, EST, JST, and BST? I don't think using them is a good
idea in any way except as an aid to 'humans'.


> - Tuesdays at 10:00 GMT-08:00 = constant offset -08:00 from GMT
> - Tuesdays at 10:00 GMT-08:00N = GMT-08:00 from Sept-March, GMT-07:00 from
> March-Sept
> - Tuesdays at 10:00 GMT-08:00S = GMT-08:00 from March-Sept, GMT-07:00 from
> Sept-March
>
> (Cross-posting to the ICU list, since there was a recent discussion of timezones
> there.)

  Is there any reason you stick to GMT (that got obsoleted/abolished a
long long time ago) instead of UTC? I also filed a bug on ICU on this
issue a long time ago, but haven't heard back.

  Jungshik

Received on Monday, 8 December 2003 13:04:51 UTC