Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=64958&edit=1

 ID:                 64958
 Comment by:         chimel31 at live dot fr
 Reported by:        chimel31 at live dot fr
 Summary:            Messed up timezone names
 Status:             Open
 Type:               Bug
 Package:            Date/time related
 Operating System:   Windows XP
 PHP Version:        Irrelevant
 Block user comment: N
 Private report:     N

 New Comment:

The descriptions of the timezones are even more horrendous than I thought:
My default timezone says: "Pacific/Honolulu [HST -10:00]"
1) It is not HST-10, it is GMT-10.
2) Apart from computers and baboon programmers, who memorizes acronyms? The 
list is supposed to help humans choose the correct timezone. The proper way to 
help is to say "Hawaiian Standard Time".
3) And my timezone not even HST, it is Pacific Standard Time, GMT-8.


Previous Comments:
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[2013-06-01 23:21:48] chimel31 at live dot fr

Description:
------------
Descriptions for timezones do not allow users to select their own timezone.
For instance, there are 160 timezones to choose from for America.
None contains the standard timezone that users expect and know, like Pacific 
Time. Instead, they are sorted by continent and cities!
Why you would expect people to select Anchorage when they live in San Francisco 
or Seattle is a mystery.

There is absolutely nothing to allow the user to select the proper timezone 
quickly, you have to browse all 160 of them to spot the ones that match your 
timezone offset, pick one and hope that city from a different state is indeed 
in the timezone your city belongs to.

I suggest:

1) The country US or USA be added between the continent and city name.
That would allow users to quickly sort and select the correct time zone.

2) If official timezone names exist, like Pacific Time, these should be present 
in the timezone description,  not just a city name from a foreign state. That 
does not help at all.

3) Timezones should be sortable by their GMT offset too. The current one 
dimension list is just not good enough. It should have a separate numeric field 
for the offset, not an offset in text format that's appended to the timezone 
description and is of absolutely no use for sorting. And the timezone library 
should come with some code to, to allow users to sort timezones on either the 
description or the GMT offset.

I appreciate that there are more timezones now, it's probably more detailed and 
fits more precise areas, but it came at a price if it makes the timezone hard 
and time-consuming to select. Something has been lost in the way, there was no 
need to reinvent the wheel, just to improve on it.



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