Name: krC82822 Date: 02/14/2001


java version "1.3.0"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.0-C)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.0-C, mixed mode)

In my application, I'd like to present a meaningful, internationalized list of
time zones for the user to pick from. The obvious code to do this would be
something like this:

    String[] ids = TimeZone.getAvailableIDs();
    String[] zoneNames = new String[ids.length];
    
    for (int i = 0; i < ids.length; i++) {
        TimeZone zone = TimeZone.getTimeZone(ids[i]);
        zoneNames[i] = zone.getDisplayName(false, TimeZone.LONG);
    }

I'd then add the resulting strings to a JList or a JComboBox or something.

This code produces completely unacceptable results, as follows:

o I get a list of over 200 time zones, many of which are duplicates with
different IDs.

o I get identical display names for different time zones. For instance, I
get "Mountain Standard Time" for both America/Denver and America/Phoenix, even
though America/Denver observes daylight saving time and America/Phoenix
doesn't. This is also (somewhat more understandably) true of the automatically-
generated display names: I get "GMT+01:00" for over thirty-five different time
zones comprising five different sets of daylight-saving time rules.

o I get back different display names for identical time zones. For instance,
there are eighteen different time zones that don't observer daylight saving
time and have a GMT offset of zero, but I only see "Greenwich Mean Time" as the
display for "GMT" and "Africa/Casablanca". I get "GMT+00:00" for all the
others.

o The time-zone list appears to come back sorted by GMT offset, but isn't
perfectly sorted, making it more difficult to filter out duplicate time zones.

o Why are English display names provided for Europe/Paris and Europe/Bucharest
but not for Europe/London, Europe/Berlin (which seems to encompass most of
Europe), or Europe/Istanbul?
(Review ID: 116831)
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