Debian Bug report logs - #93810
Australian zoneinfo wrong - should be AEST, not EST

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Stone <daniel@kabuki.openfridge.net>

To: submit@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Australian zoneinfo wrong - should be AEST, not EST

Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:20:50 +1000

Package: glibc
Version: 2.2.2-4

Hi,
I'm in Melbourne, Australia, so, naturally, I use the Australia/Melbourne
timezone; logical, right?
But obviously not to libc6:

daniel@piro:~$ date
Fri Apr 13 16:20:10 EST 2001

This should be AEST, seeing as that's the official timezone name (Australian
Eastern Standard Time).

This has caused much confusion on IRC; even worse than normal! Stop the
madness!

:) d

-- 
Daniel Stone
Linux Kernel Developer
daniel@kabuki.openfridge.net

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
G!>CS d s++:- a---- C++ ULS++++$>B P---- L+++>++++ E+(joe)>+++ W++ N->++ !o
K? w++(--) O---- M- V-- PS+++ PE- Y PGP>++ t--- 5-- X- R- tv-(!) b+++ DI+++ 
D+ G e->++ h!(+) r+(%) y? UF++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Message #12 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Stone <daniel@sfarc.net>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Cc: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov

Subject: Australian Eastern times - AEST

Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:48:25 +1000

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Hi guys,
I've *always* seen the Australian Eastern (Victoria, New South Wales,
Tasmania, Queensland) states' timezones referred to as AEST - Australian
Eastern Standard Time. The TZ package, however, refers to it as EST, which
not only confuses everyone, but also confuses things like date[1] command.

I believe AEST is the official name, and it makes life easier. Ben - the
patch for Debian is attached. Timezone guys - ignore all the script stuff
before the actual diff, and please apply the diff itself for the next
upstream release.

Thanks :)
d

[1]: Just try telling date "EST" in a format, when meaning the Australian
one.

-- 
Daniel Stone						     <daniel@sfarc.net>
<Nuke> "can NE1 help me aim nuclear weaponz????? /MSG ME!!"

[tz-au-aest (text/plain, attachment)]

[Message part 3 (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #17 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Alex Pennace <alex@pennace.org>

To: Daniel Stone <daniel@sfarc.net>, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Cc: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: Australian Eastern times - AEST

Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:06:32 -0400

On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 08:48:03PM +1000, Daniel Stone wrote:
> I've *always* seen the Australian Eastern (Victoria, New South Wales,
> Tasmania, Queensland) states' timezones referred to as AEST - Australian
> Eastern Standard Time. The TZ package, however, refers to it as EST, which
> not only confuses everyone, but also confuses things like date[1] command.
> 
> I believe AEST is the official name, and it makes life easier.
[snip]
> --- glibc-2.2.3/timezone/australasia.orig	Sat Apr  7 16:02:40 2001
> +++ glibc-2.2.3/timezone/australasia	Fri Jul 27 03:02:24 2001
> @@ -56,11 +56,11 @@
>  Rule	Holiday	1993	1994	-	Mar	Sun>=1	2:00s	0	-
>  Zone Australia/Brisbane	10:12:08 -	LMT	1895
>  			10:00	Aus	EST	1971
> -			10:00	AQ	EST
> +			10:00	AQ	AEST
>  Zone Australia/Lindeman  9:55:56 -	LMT	1895
>  			10:00	Aus	EST	1971
>  			10:00	AQ	EST	1992 Jul
> -			10:00	Holiday	EST
> +			10:00	Holiday	AEST

Was its official name AEST between 1895 and July 1992? If so it is
appropriate to change the format fields of those entries too.

Message #22 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Stone <daniel@sfarc.net>

To: Alex Pennace <alex@pennace.org>

Cc: 93810@bugs.debian.org, tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: Australian Eastern times - AEST

Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 10:39:35 +1000

On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 11:06:32AM -0400, Alex Pennace wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 08:48:03PM +1000, Daniel Stone wrote:
> > I've *always* seen the Australian Eastern (Victoria, New South Wales,
> > Tasmania, Queensland) states' timezones referred to as AEST - Australian
> > Eastern Standard Time. The TZ package, however, refers to it as EST, which
> > not only confuses everyone, but also confuses things like date[1] command.
> > 
> > I believe AEST is the official name, and it makes life easier.
> [snip]
> > --- glibc-2.2.3/timezone/australasia.orig	Sat Apr  7 16:02:40 2001
> > +++ glibc-2.2.3/timezone/australasia	Fri Jul 27 03:02:24 2001
> > @@ -56,11 +56,11 @@
> >  Rule	Holiday	1993	1994	-	Mar	Sun>=1	2:00s	0	-
> >  Zone Australia/Brisbane	10:12:08 -	LMT	1895
> >  			10:00	Aus	EST	1971
> > -			10:00	AQ	EST
> > +			10:00	AQ	AEST
> >  Zone Australia/Lindeman  9:55:56 -	LMT	1895
> >  			10:00	Aus	EST	1971
> >  			10:00	AQ	EST	1992 Jul
> > -			10:00	Holiday	EST
> > +			10:00	Holiday	AEST
> 
> Was its official name AEST between 1895 and July 1992? If so it is
> appropriate to change the format fields of those entries too.

Probably, I'm not sure.

-- 
Daniel Stone						     <daniel@sfarc.net>
<Nuke> "can NE1 help me aim nuclear weaponz????? /MSG ME!!"

Message #29 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>

To: Daniel Stone <daniel@kabuki.openfridge.net>, Alex Pennace <alex@pennace.org>, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Australian zoneinfo wrong - should be AEST, not EST

Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:00:52 +0900

Hi,

> I'm in Melbourne, Australia, so, naturally, I use the Australia/Melbourne
> timezone; logical, right?
> But obviously not to libc6:
> 
> daniel@piro:~$ date
> Fri Apr 13 16:20:10 EST 2001
> 
> This should be AEST, seeing as that's the official timezone name (Australian
> Eastern Standard Time).
> 
> This has caused much confusion on IRC; even worse than normal! Stop the
> madness!

glibc 2.3.1 timezone/australasia has a folloing note:

# 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.

So the result of their long discussions, it does not become "AEST".
AEST is not common even in Australia from their search result. So I
can't accept your bug report because upstream and the majority of
Australian do not use AEST.  I shall close this bug unless you have
strong reason to keep opening.

Regards,
-- gotom

Message #38 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>

To: Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>

Cc: Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>, 95254@bugs.debian.org, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Processed: reassign 95254 coreutils

Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 02:15:37 +0900

At Sat, 19 Apr 2003 10:12:23 -0400,
Michael Stone wrote:
> This bug goes to libc6 because the ambiguity is introduced by it, not
> coreutils. date(1) includes a bison parser, but that only parses the
> input--the output is generated by strftime. There's no parser in the
> world that can guess what "EST" is supposed to mean if it has two
> completely different meanings. 
> 
> > env TZ=Australia/NSW perl -e 'use POSIX qw(strftime); $_=strftime("%Z",localtime); printf "$_\n";'
> EST
> 
> Note that this is only stftime, not date(1) and that the TZ output is
> "EST". If you don't want to fix this you can close it, but you can't
> reassign it to me.

Well it's not coreutils bug, and I think it's not glibc bug; see my
mail in #93810.  It's never fixed.  I would like to close it, is it
ok?

Regards,
-- gotom

Message #43 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>

To: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>

Cc: Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>, 95254@bugs.debian.org, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Processed: reassign 95254 coreutils

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 14:03:07 -0400

>Well it's not coreutils bug, and I think it's not glibc bug; see my
>mail in #93810.  

I don't agree with your conclusion. AEST and EST may both be used, and
EST may even be more prominant in .au. (Of course, the google search
results aren't useful because it's unclear which EST the hits refer
to...) But it seems that people in .au can understand what AEST refers
to and that using AEST would eliminate some confusion. I don't see a
down side to using AEST instead of EST.

Mike Stone

Message #48 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>

To: Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Cc: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>, Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>, 95254@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: Processed: reassign 95254 coreutils

Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 11:30:57 +0900

At Sat, 19 Apr 2003 14:03:07 -0400,
Michael Stone wrote:
> >Well it's not coreutils bug, and I think it's not glibc bug; see my
> >mail in #93810.  
> 
> I don't agree with your conclusion. AEST and EST may both be used, and
> EST may even be more prominant in .au. (Of course, the google search
> results aren't useful because it's unclear which EST the hits refer
> to...) But it seems that people in .au can understand what AEST refers
> to and that using AEST would eliminate some confusion. I don't see a
> down side to using AEST instead of EST.

No, it's not my conclusion.  It's tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov upstream
conclusion which has been discussed for a long time.  I only follow
their opinion.  Your "prominent" is only your "feeling" or "personal
opinion", what is the different from the google search.  And what do
you think about "IST"?  At least two bugs are too much to stay in BTS.

Regards,
-- gotom

Message #53 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>

To: Michael Stone <mstone@mathom.us>

Cc: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>, 95254@bugs.debian.org, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: Processed: reassign 95254 coreutils

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 00:06:47 +0900

Hi!

At Sat, 19 Apr 2003 23:04:41 -0400,
Michael Stone wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 11:30:57AM +0900, you wrote:
> >Your "prominent" is only your "feeling" or "personal opinion", what is
> >the different from the google search.  
> 
> 1. I think you misread. I said "may be more prominent"--I have no
> opinion on that.

Ah, sorry, it's my misread.  I guess you have any insistence, so...

> 2. You didn't answer the question--what is the downside to using AEST?

One defect is that AEST is not general in Australia from the report.
If suddenly we change from EST to AEST, can you say there is no
problem?  Well, to be honest, I don't know there are any more
drawbacks.  But from IST example, uniqueness of timezone name is not
the absolute requirement.  I guess your question is derived from
"timezone should be unique", but I think it's not really necessary
thing as Paul Eggert said.

Regards,
-- gotom

Message #58 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>

To: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>

Cc: 95254@bugs.debian.org, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: Processed: reassign 95254 coreutils

Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 16:22:58 -0400

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 12:06:47AM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote:
>drawbacks.  But from IST example, uniqueness of timezone name is not
>the absolute requirement.  I guess your question is derived from
>"timezone should be unique",

It would solve problems, and I have yet to hear a downside. The fact
that some timezones might not be unique doesn't seem a good argument
against fixing those that can be.

Mike Stone

Message #63 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>

To: Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Cc: GOTO Masanori <gotom@debian.or.jp>, 95254@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: Processed: reassign 95254 coreutils

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 13:28:11 +0900

At Mon, 21 Apr 2003 16:22:58 -0400,
Michael Stone wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 12:06:47AM +0900, GOTO Masanori wrote:
> >drawbacks.  But from IST example, uniqueness of timezone name is not
> >the absolute requirement.  I guess your question is derived from
> >"timezone should be unique",
> 
> It would solve problems, and I have yet to hear a downside. The fact
> that some timezones might not be unique doesn't seem a good argument
> against fixing those that can be.

Hey, it's only your thought.  You only insist to hear my downside
point.  And so?  I leave these bugs alone.  If you would like to
modify this, please contact appropriate lists.  If not, it's totally
useless discussion.

Regards,
-- gotom

Message #68 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Stone <daniel@raging.dropbear.id.au>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Summary of the confusion

Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 17:29:27 +1000

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Unfortunately, the sudden burst of activity on #93810 caught me by
surprise, and it took me a while to see it.

Let me assure you, as an Australian who has lived in Australia his whole
life, that AEST is more common than EST. I very rarely see EST - it's
either AEST or AEDT. Also, I agree with Mike's comments - just because
there's some ambiguity there already, doesn't mean there should be more.
"It's what we do now" isn't a convincing case for retaining it.

IMO the change to AEST can do nothing but *alleviate* confusion. Keeping
its abbreviation shared with one of the most often-used timezones in the
world is a bad idea, and it should be changed AEST sooner rather than
later.

But that's just my opinion. :)

-- 
Daniel Stone 	     <daniel@raging.dropbear.id.au>             <dstone@kde.org>
KDE: Konquering a desktop near you - http://www.kde.org

[Message part 2 (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #75 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Stone <daniels@debian.org>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Cc: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov

Subject: AEST vs EST for Australian time

Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:13:55 +1100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Hi all,
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.

Let me assure you, as an Australian who's lived in Australia my whole
life, that when we are writing something that will be seen by a global
audience, we use AEST rather than EST. This is entirely empirical, and I
can't really back it up, other than assure you that there's not exactly
a financial incentive for me to lie or something - I just want to see
this mess cleared up.

And then there's the stunningly bad basis for this outlandish claim -
Googling for 'aest site:.au' vs. 'est site:.au'. Aside from the fact
that a lot of us have non-.au sites (I personally have
people.debian.org, fooishbar.org, penguinppc.org, and many more - this
is not at all uncommon, and grows when you consider LiveJournal,
blogger, etc), this claim is *just* *plain* *wrong*.

http://www.googlefight.com/cgi-bin/compare.pl?q1=aest+site%3A.au&q2=est+site%3A.au&B1=Make+a+fight%21&compare=1&langue=us

This URL shows that 'aest site:.au' comes up with 332,000 results,
compared to 323,000 for 'est site:.au'. Even the worst basis for any
argument is factually incorrect, not just staggeringly irrelevant.

As an Australian with actual first-hand (as opposed to Google-derived)
knowledge of the situation, I urge you to switch to AEST.

Thanks,
Daniel

(Please keep me CC'ed on all this, I am not subscribed, and I will not
 see mail to 93810@bugs.debian.org, only
 93810-submitter@bugs.debian.org).

-- 
Daniel Stone                                                <daniels@debian.org>
Debian X Strike Force:                    http://people.debian.org/~branden/xsf/

[Message part 2 (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #80 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>

To: Daniel Stone <daniels@debian.org>, 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: AEST vs EST for Australian time

Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 13:33:58 -0800

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/>

Message #85 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Stone <daniels@debian.org>

To: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>

Cc: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#93810: AEST vs EST for Australian time

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:39:14 +1100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 01:33:58PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 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.

Hence the CC.

> FWIW, here is the information in the upstream sources about this:
> # [lots of stuff]

Yeah, in the bug log; that's why I made reference to this.

-- 
Daniel Stone                                                <daniels@debian.org>
Debian X Strike Force:                    http://people.debian.org/~branden/xsf/

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Message #90 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Donovan Baarda <abo@minkirri.apana.org.au>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <93810@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: libc6: My vote: EST/EDT more common than EST/EST

Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2004 12:22:04 +1000

Package: libc6
Version: 2.3.2.ds1-11
Severity: normal
Followup-For: Bug #93810


Just adding my vote;

I'm not too fussed about pre-pending A... but at some point libc6
changed from EST/EDT to EST/EST. From my experience, EST/EDT is more
widely understood and used than the even more ambiguous EST/EST.

Please bring back EDT :-)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (100, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.24-1-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages libc6 depends on:
ii  libdb1-compat                 2.1.3-7    The Berkeley database routines [gl

-- no debconf information

Message #95 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Stone <daniel@fooishbar.org>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: AEST vs EST, redux

Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 23:19:17 +0300

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

FWIW, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_zones lists:
> UTC + 10, K
> 
>     * Australia (AEST— Eastern Standard Time)
>           o Australian Capital Territory**,
>           o New South Wales** (except Broken Hill, which observes South Australia time),
>           o Queensland,
>           o Tasmania** (which observes DST starting on the first weekend of October instead of the last),
>           o Victoria**

Cheers,
Daniel

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Message #100 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ted Percival <ted@midg3t.net>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <93810@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: libc6: Patched tzdata packages available

Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:28:09 +1000

Package: libc6
Followup-For: Bug #93810

For those who prefer their timezones as AEST, AEDT and so on, I am
maintaining a patch & Debian tzdata package with these timezone names.

http://tedp.id.au/tzdata-au/

Message #105 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Cc: control@bugs.debian.org

Subject: australian time zone debacle

Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 06:37:21 +0000

reassign 93810 tzdata
quit

This is once again being discussed on the tz mailing list.

Also see
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478566

Message #112 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Tomasz Ciolek <tmc@vandradlabs.com.au>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: AEST vs EST

Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:13:44 +1100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Hi all

I just wanted to point out that having libc6 time zone data report
australian dates and times as EST and not as AEST leads to erroneous
behaviour in zope and several other web application engines.

Cheers
Tomasz

-- 
Tomasz M. Ciolek	
*******************************************************************************
 tmc at vandradlabs dot com dot au 
*******************************************************************************
   GPG Key ID:		0x41C4C2F0
   GPG Key Fingerprint: 3883 B308 8256 2246 D3ED  A1FF 3A1D 0EAD 41C4 C2F0
   Key available on good key-servers
*******************************************************************************

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #119 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ted Percival <ted@midg3t.net>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>

Cc: GNU Libc Maintainers <debian-glibc@lists.debian.org>

Subject: Bug 93810 merged but it is not the same

Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:31:38 -0700

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:27 AM, Debian Bug Tracking System
<owner@bugs.debian.org> wrote:
> > forcemerge 93810 95254
> Bug#93810: Australian zoneinfo wrong - should be AEST, not EST
> Bug#95254: strftime("%Z") uses ambiguous timezone names
> Bug#149902: strftime("%Z") uses ambiguous timezone names

I don't find bug 93810 (Australian zoneinfo wrong) the same as the
other two (ambiguous timezone names). The zone names for Australia are
*wrong*. Ambiguity is only a side effect.

I know this bug won't be fixed in Debian unless upstream fixes it, but
IMO the bugs should still be tracked as distinct. Would you consider
unmerging them?

Message #124 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>

To: Ted Percival <ted@midg3t.net>

Cc: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug 93810 merged but it is not the same

Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:42:55 -0600

unmerge 93810
block 95254 by 93810
quit

Ted Percival wrote:
> Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:

>>> forcemerge 93810 95254
>> Bug#93810: Australian zoneinfo wrong - should be AEST, not EST
>> Bug#95254: strftime("%Z") uses ambiguous timezone names
>> Bug#149902: strftime("%Z") uses ambiguous timezone names
>
> I don't find bug 93810 (Australian zoneinfo wrong) the same as the
> other two (ambiguous timezone names). The zone names for Australia are
> *wrong*. Ambiguity is only a side effect.

Okay.

[1] http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#requestserv

Message #133 received at 93810@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Timothy Arceri <t_arceri@yahoo.com.au>

To: 93810@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Fixed upstream

Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 07:28:03 +1000

This has finally been fixed upstream (yay). This bug can be closed.

http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2014-June/021089.html

Message #138 received at 93810-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>

To: 93810-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Australian zoneinfo wrong - should be AEST, not EST

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 00:42:03 -0700

As this bug is fixed in Debian sid now, I'm closing it.

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