RFR: 8317979: Use TZ database style abbreviations in the CLDR locale provider [v3]

Naoto Sato naoto at openjdk.org
Tue Oct 17 22:19:08 UTC 2023


On Tue, 17 Oct 2023 21:45:57 GMT, Steven Loomis <srl at openjdk.org> wrote:

> > CLDR provides very few short names for time zones, such as PST/PDT. This will typically end up substituting names from the COMPAT provider. Once the COMPAT is removed, they will be displayed in the GMT format, i.e., GMT+XX:YY. Although some of the short names in the COMPAT provider are somewhat questionable (less common ones are simply made up from the long names by taking the initials), it would not be desirable for them to fall back to the GMT format. To mitigate the situation, CLDR can use the abbreviated names from the TZ database, which contains legacy (major) short names as FORMAT. The CLDR provider can use them instead of the GMT offset style. This enhancement is a precursor to the future removal of the COMPAT provider.
> 
> I added a note to [JDK-8317979](https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8317979):
> 
> This is intentional, because these short names may not be known to users. Do you have data that ja-JP, zh-CN, de-DE users expect and are familiar with `PST/PDT`? This is why CLDR fallback rules would fall back to `Los Angeles Time` for example in the longer name. It's not short, but it's understandable, and the numeric offset can work for short.

Yes, I am saying not having short names is not a bad thing, or rather better than making up uncommon names among those locals (which COMPAT is doing). GMT offset style is totally acceptable in such cases IMO. In fact, TZ database is getting away from using old three-letter short names.

> I'd encourage engaging with CLDR-TC to discuss the short names upstream if you have data on the recognizability of these short names. In fact, CLDR probably has _too many_ short names for zones.

No, I don't have any data on this. At least I can say that there are no short names for those in Japanese.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/16206#issuecomment-1767274871


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