[Linux-aus] Sept 25 IRC LUG Meeting log

[Glen Turner]

On 08/10/2012, at 9:36 AM, Noel Butler <noel.butler at ausics.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 2012-10-06 at 11:44 +1000, Don Knowles wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Next meet in irc.freenode.net/#linux-aus-lugs will be October 30th at 9pm AEST, 8pm Qld time (curse you, daylight saving!).
> 
> That's actually  October 30th at 9pm AEDT, 8pm AEST.
> 
> I know some clueless web devs all over the place confuse everyone bewcause they don't know any better and call it  Aus East Summer Time, but its official status is Aus East Daylight Time, S always stands for Standard.
> 
> Off course you can also substitute what D stands for *cough* or replace it with P, for "pretend" time  <face-wink.png>


Here's the background, so you understand what is going on:

It is the policy of the tzdata maintainers to use the official name for the timezone. If there is no official abbreviation given in the legislation then the usual rules of abbreviation are used. For example, South Australia's timezones are named Central Standard Time and Central Summer Time. Both abbreviate to CST and no alternative abbreviation is provided by the legislation. It is the long-held (25+ years) view of the tzdata maintainers that any confusion arising from the application of the legislated or official timezone name is the responsibility of legislators or officials to resolve. tzdata maintainers follow the law, as they don't want any legal liability falling upon themselves from not following the law.

Because of governments' long-standing inability to get their act together on timezone names, the tzdata maintainers suggest you use a location rather than a timezone name when giving a time (eg: "10:37 in Adelaide", rather than "10:37 CST"). Recent tzdata code does this. The location name is the official name of the location in the script of the requesting program.

-glen