Re: [icu-design] System time zone detection on unix platforms

[Mark D. <mar...@ic...>]

We have converted over to a much better system of localization for 
timezones, using CLDR data. For more information on that, see

http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/#%3CtimeZoneNames%3E

Mark

Pulbere, Alexandru wrote:

> Recently we've encountered a problem were dates are not formatted 
> correctly on unix platforms because the default time zone is not 
> determined correctly.
>
> For example: date/time values which are in DST range for Estern Time, 
> when formatted FULL type always have "EST" as timezone.
>
> On unix platforms the timezone ID is obtained from tzname[0] array, 
> which always returns the "standard" abbreviation of a timezone: EST, 
> CST, PST, etc.
>
> A solution to this problem would be to implement a map similar to the 
> one implemented for Windows platform.
> The difficulty is that, on unix, timezones that have different DST 
> rules but use the same offset might be represented by the same 
> "standard" abbreviation.
>
> For example: America/Regina and America/Chicago, both use CST for 
> standard time. In this case the DST abbreviation might provide a key 
> to differentiate them.
>
> Because of that, both standard and DST abbreviations should be used to 
> try and determine the ICU timezone.
>
> I'd like to ask if ICU dev. team has anything in mind on how to 
> address this problem and what do you think about the approach 
> described above.
>
>
> Alex Pulbere
> Software Engineer
> Cognos Inc.
>
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