The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database

If you like this there has been a interesting discussion on the tzdb mailing list about how to handle the Vancouver change and the next releases of the tzdb and the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository: https://lists.iana.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/thread/IE...

> the Time Zone Database also contains a surprising amount of whimsy.

Which I would find "cute" if the database contained an equal amount of reason. I am perennially irritated that "US/Pacific" which is an _official_ name of a time zone _as used_ by the relevant time keeping authority, is called "backwards."

I still think we should move away from a tz database, a 1970s idea, and move to a .timezone TLD with tzinfo stored in TXT records. Give each country it's own NS in the TLD and give them the authority to update it. If you still want a "full file" then do a zone transfer. Plus, we could also use punycode, and easily have fully internationalized time zone names, something we currently lack.

I genuinely dislike the structure and nature of the tz database.