Comment 23 for bug 185190

I registered a bug on this when I couldn't find this one... bug # 199976

I know this has all been rehashed, but I think trying to add location / TZ data for each location entry is not going to work because the system doesn't select a location entry with the proper timezone in the first place.

I think an acceptable way to handle this time zone issue is to scrap the current location options and create a new location database with one entry per state / region / et al that fits into a timezone... currently there are many many many entries for the same time zones.

Right now there are lots of time zone choices that don't seem to have any logic as to why they were selected.

Coming from a US Perspective, I believe there are very few instances where timezones do not follow state borders. We should really have a tz entry for each state (maybe state capitals unless the state has two time zones) or reduce the number of entries overall in tzdata. Menominee, Wisconsin has a tz entry and I'm not sure why... we could remove all Mid-west USA entries except Chicago (which is CST) and I think people would figure it out.

It would also be helpful to display the timezone (even just the abbreviation) for each location ... so that I know that Rainy River or Chicago are both in the same Time Zone.

I'll explain my issue (below) with locations as they exist today:

Rainy River is on the border of Minnesota (USA) / Ontario (Canada) which is a very sparsely populated area with the two main industries being Farming (Sugar Beets) and Tourism (Fishing.) I only know about the Rainy River because I lived up there for a few years and fished the River but most of the state's residents do not know that as a location in our time zone.

and here specifically is my issue with the proximity based approach currently being applied... the system currently picks locations closer to the target city even though they're across time zones.

When picking a location for the city of Hibbing, Minnesota, USA -- the time zone defaults to America/Atikokan ... which is Eastern Standard Time (-5 GMT,) but all of Minnesota is Central Standard Time (-6 GMT.)

This is also a problem for Grand Marais, Minnesota -- which gets lumped in with the America/Thunder_Bay ... which is actually Canada, not USA. Grand Marais, Minnesota (not Michigan) is set to EST and it should be CST.

Minneapolis, Minnesota defaults to America/Rainy_River and it is further East than Hibbing.

So there is an issue somewhere with how cities are associated with time zones. It seems like the NE "arrowhead" of Minnesota is all set to Eastern Standard Time instead of Central Standard Time.