Bug#93810: AEST vs EST for Australian time
Daniel Stone <daniels@debian.org> writes:
> I am the submitter of that long-standing Debian bug,
> http://bugs.debian.org/93810, wherein I contend that 'AEST' should be
> used as the timezone name for Australia's eastern states, not 'EST'. It
> was suggested in this report that 'Australians do not use AEST'. Aside
> from the fact this was based on a stunningly bad assertion, it's untrue.
While I suppose Debian could make a local patch, this discussion really
should be taken to tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov, the mailing list for the upstream
sources for the time zone databases used by many applications. This has
been discussed on that mailing list many times, so you may be expected to
demonstrate what might have changed from the last time it was discussed.
FWIW, here is the information in the upstream sources about this:
# From Paul Eggert (2001-04-05), summarizing a long discussion about "EST"
# versus "AEST" etc.:
#
# I see the following points of dispute:
#
# * How important are unique time zone abbreviations?
#
# Here I tend to agree with the point (most recently made by Chris
# Newman) that unique abbreviations should not be essential for proper
# operation of software. We have other instances of ambiguity
# (e.g. "IST" denoting both "Israel Standard Time" and "Indian
# Standard Time"), and they are not likely to go away any time soon.
# In the old days, some software mistakenly relied on unique
# abbreviations, but this is becoming less true with time, and I don't
# think it's that important to cater to such software these days.
#
# On the other hand, there is another motivation for unambiguous
# abbreviations: it cuts down on human confusion. This is
# particularly true for Australia, where "EST" can mean one thing for
# time T and a different thing for time T plus 1 second.
#
# * Does the relevant legislation indicate which abbreviations should be used?
#
# Here I tend to think that things are a mess, just as they are in
# many other countries. We Americans are currently disagreeing about
# which abbreviation to use for the newly legislated Chamorro Standard
# Time, for example.
#
# Personally, I would prefer to use common practice; I would like to
# refer to legislation only for examples of common practice, or as a
# tiebreaker.
#
# * Do Australians more often use "Eastern Daylight Time" or "Eastern
# Summer Time"? Do they typically prefix the time zone names with
# the word "Australian"?
#
# My own impression is that both "Daylight Time" and "Summer Time" are
# common and are widely understood, but that "Summer Time" is more
# popular; and that the leading "A" is also common but is omitted more
# often than not. I just used AltaVista advanced search and got the
# following count of page hits:
#
# 1,103 "Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au
# 971 "Australian Eastern Summer Time" AND domain:au
# 613 "Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au
# 127 "Australian Eastern Daylight Time" AND domain:au
#
# Here "Summer" seems quite a bit more popular than "Daylight",
# particularly when we know the time zone is Australian and not US,
# say. The "Australian" prefix seems to be popular for Eastern Summer
# Time, but unpopular for Eastern Daylight Time.
#
# For abbreviations, tools like AltaVista are less useful because of
# ambiguity. Many hits are not really time zones, unfortunately, and
# many hits denote US time zones and not Australian ones. But here
# are the hit counts anyway:
#
# 161,304 "EST" and domain:au
# 25,156 "EDT" and domain:au
# 18,263 "AEST" and domain:au
# 10,416 "AEDT" and domain:au
#
# 14,538 "CST" and domain:au
# 5,728 "CDT" and domain:au
# 176 "ACST" and domain:au
# 29 "ACDT" and domain:au
#
# 7,539 "WST" and domain:au
# 68 "AWST" and domain:au
#
# This data suggest that Australians tend to omit the "A" prefix in
# practice. The situation for "ST" versus "DT" is less clear, given
# the ambiguities involved.
#
# * How do Australians feel about the abbreviations in the tz database?
#
# If you just count Australians on this list, I count 2 in favor and 3
# against. One of the "against" votes (David Keegel) counseled delay,
# saying that both AEST/AEDT and EST/EST are widely used and
# understood in Australia.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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