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Careful! GMT != the time in London, as many people tend to assume. Britain is currently on BST (British Summer Time) which is GMT+1.
by mseebach 16y ago
Careful! GMT != the time in London, as many people tend to assume. Britain is currently on BST (British Summer Time) which is GMT+1.
- StavrosK 16y agoThis. Almost nobody needs GMT, so it would be better if it was left out, to avoid confusion. I can't tell you how many times people showed up in meetings an hour earlier because they said "GMT" and meant "BST".
- Arubis 16y agoBelieve it or not, West Africa exists. Perhaps a better indicator would be regional, ie. Casablanca/Dakar (+0h). edit: reply below (correctly) points out that Casablanca is on WET. go figure.
- mseebach 16y agoThe only reliable indicator of offset is political geographical features. This would also keep you from making the exact error that the parent pointed out, as Casablanca is observing summertime and is thus currently in GMT+1. As far as I can tell, the only territory currently at GMT+0 is Cape Verde, which I would think it's fair to classify as "almost no-one".
- cashman 16y agoReykjavik, Iceland, is always at GMT+0 and has no DST. http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=211 http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=211 (That doesn't really contradict "almost no-one", of course.)
- mseebach 16y agoSo according to http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/eu/gmt.html http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/e... http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/africa/gmt.html http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/a... a comprehensive list of territories observing GMT all year: * Iceland * Burkina Faso * Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) * Gambia * Ghana * Guinea-Bissau * Guinea * Liberia * Mali * Mauritania * Saint Helena * Sao Tome and Principe * Senegal * Sierra Leone * Togo
- skrebbel 16y agothere certainly are time zones with less than 500k inhabitants. if you're dropping GMT+0, it'd only be fair to drop those other time zones too!
- Arubis 16y agoIf I may prove one of your points whule disputing another... I could've sworn Casablanca was GMT, and I live in a GMT territory. So, yes, it is confusing. However, it's also worth pointing out that there _are_ people living here. This comment's sibling describes GMT as <500k inhabitants, but Dakar alone has over a million residents.
- mseebach 16y agoErrata: Cape Verde is the only territory currently at GMT-1. Got my timezone trivia wrong, sorry.
- fanf2 16y agoThere are occasional cases where a location isn't enough to identify a TZ rule. The most famous is Xinjiang where the Han run on Beijing time (like the rest of China) and the Uighurs run on Beijing-2 (traditional and more normal for their location) and both live in the same place. But that's a pathological case :-) More seriously, iCalendar, the main standard for exchanging schedules, has broken models of time and place, and I don't see any desire to fix it properly. http://fanf.livejournal.com/104586.html http://fanf.livejournal.com/104586.html
- StavrosK 16y agoThat's what I was implying with my comment above, i.e. that the selector should mention the region rather than the abstract timezone. By "almost nobody" I meant the people who need to use the abstract timezone rather than refer to some specific area.
- gmac 16y agoEven better, put it in, but pop up an explanation along the lines of these comments if anyone chooses it. Less frustration, more education.
- edanm 16y agoExcept that users tend not to read text.
- gmac 16y agoTrue(ish), but you don't have to make it text-heavy. Some kind of warning symbol and a brief message ("Are you sure? Only $OBSCURE_COUNTRIES use GMT.") would surely suffice.
- pasbesoin 16y agoColor it red or something (the GMT data entry/line itself, I mean) (qualification: I haven't looked at the application, yet -- much.)
- fanf2 16y agoMicrosoft Exchange and Outlook refer to UK time as GMT regardless of the time of year. They really are astonishingly stupid about time.