Comment by rlpb
5 months ago
> ...I have the option to select..."(UTC+0) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London"
This is factually wrong already. In summer, London is not UTC+0. They mean "UTC+0 ignoring DST", but that is not useful. If they're going to be specific by specifying a UTC offset, what's the point if it doesn't include DST? How is that useful as an identifier when it's ambiguous? With their history of getting it wrong, this just introduces doubt about its correctness.
Further, if you ask Outlook to show you two timezones at once and do not override labels, it will label BST "UTC+0" (it isn't; it's UTC+1!) while also calling eg. India "UTC+5:30", implying a time difference of 5.5 hours when it is actually 4.5 hours. This isn't just a case of "ah - they actually mean ..."; it's most definitely wrong!
The problem is that it has a very US-centric view of what DST is. You can mostly ignore it in the US when calculating time zones because the entire country changes DST at the same time. This is not the case internationally.
> This is factually wrong already. In summer, London is not UTC+0.
Yeah, the "regular" time is UTC+0, with it changing in the summer. I'm aware it's a really poor implementation, but it is there as a separate option from "UTC" itself preserving the same offset (0) all year.
> The problem is that it has a very US-centric view of what DST is. You can mostly ignore it in the US when calculating time zones because the entire country changes DST at the same time. This is not the case internationally.
Probably the reason they, for some reason, split the setting for "Amsterdam, Bern, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna" and "Brussels, Copenhaguen, Madrid, Paris" even though they all follow the same timezone and change simultaneously.
> In summer, London is not UTC+0. They mean "UTC+0 ignoring DST", but that is not useful
This is how 99% of people interpret it
It's not ambiguous as you imply.
Summer time is not the default time
I don't know enough about the India case to know how/why it's wrong though
Tell that to Ireland where we observe Irish Standard Time during the summer (and GMT during the winter).
Tell what? Nobody cares, because everybody knows what is being said
Your TZ doesn't change between summer and winter. What changes is the shift
I literally didn't see anybody getting confused with this in any country (yes, including Ireland) with summer time.
But some people think they're too smart when they nitpick about minor issues
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