Hello, I need some help from Australian people.
Debian Installer includes (in tzsetup) a way to choose a timezone among multiple timezones, when users have picked a country that has more than one timezone. I'm currently working on this as things change constantly in such matters. As preliminary, please notice that the point is not giving a full choice within the gazillion of possible timezones. See "dpkg-reconfigure tzdata". The timezone choice in D-I is supposed to be user-friendly and easy to understand for the average citizen of the said country. 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). Lindeman island is in Queensland and uses the same time than it. Broken Hill is only specific because, even if it's in NSW, it follows South Australia time.. Indeed, after some study, Australia (excluding outside territories that have their own ISO code anyway) has only 7 different time "zones", as of 2011: 5 for the "continent"+Tasmania: - Eastern Time with use of DST: Victoria, NSW, ACT, Tasmania - Eastern Time withouty use of DST: Queensland - Central Time with use of DST: South Australia - Central Time without use of DST: Northern Territory - Western Time without use of DST: Western Australia 2 more specific: - Lord Howe Island - Eyre Highway (also known as Eucla) using a funky UTC+8:45. That's about 200 people, according to Wikipedia. This "timezone" is unofficially called Central Western 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? Would something hurt some feelings (such as mentioning Victoria before NSW)? 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 PS: for those nitpicking folds among you, Cocos (Keeling), Christmas and Norfolk Islands as well as the three Australian Antarctic Territories are supposed to be covered by different choices when it comes at "country". --
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