Christian PERRIER <bubulle@debian.org> writes: > The timezone choice in D-I is supposed to be user-friendly and easy to > understand for the average citizen of the said country. FWIW: the existing Australian timezone choice in D-I seems fine from the point of view of the Australians I've seen do installs (including myself). > When it comes at Australia, the choice was, up to now: > > Lord Howe Island > Hobart > Melbourne > Sydney > Broken Hill > Brisbane > Lindeman > Adelaide > Darwin > Perth > Canberra > Eucla > Currie > Yancowinna > > That's indeed insane..:-). Hobart (Tasmania), Melbourne (Victoria), > Sydney (NSW) and Canberra (ACT) have the *exact* same time rules > (including DST). But they didn't always; and with the tendency of governments to flex their arbitrary timezone powers, they may be different again in future. People's knowledge of timezone rules tends (IME) to stick at the point where they learned about a particular change which they had to learn; it rarely gets updated. Hobart people will probably not know that Melbourne's timezone is the same now, for example. > Indeed, after some study, Australia (excluding outside territories > that have their own ISO code anyway) has only 7 different time > "zones", as of 2011: Which will likely change again in the future. We are cursed with arbitrary government intervention in timezone rules, implemented with little advance notice. > I currently propose to offer the following choices in D-I: > > Victoria, ACT, NSW, Tasmania (Eastern Time, DST) > Queensland (Eastern Time, no DST) > South Australia (Central Time, DST) > Northern Territory (Central Time, no DST) > Western Australia (Western Time) > Central Western Standard Time (Eucla) > Lord Howe Island > > Do you guys think this would be understandable to the average > Australian? Yes. However, please ensure that no-one working on this gets the impression this reduction in options is to be relied on; it's at the whim of government that demonstrates frequent whimsy in adding as well as reducing options. > Would something hurt some feelings (such as mentioning Victoria before > NSW)? Inter-state rivalry is not something Australians get particularly upset about; at least, not for something as inconsequential as which one gets mentioned first in a list. Maybe mention ACT first to defer to the nominal capital of the country. Or not, as you choose; I doubt anyone will be upset. > An alternative was: > Eastern Time with DST > Eastern Time without DST > Central Time with DST > Central Time without DST > Western Time > Central Western Standard Time > Lord Howe Island −1 for that. Average citizens can't be expected to know any name for their time zone that isn't their name they for the region in which they live (e.g. “Melbourne” or “Victoria”). -- \ “I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or | `\ anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic.” —Albert | _o__) Einstein, unsent letter, 1955 | Ben Finney
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