Re: User-Friendly TimeZone List

On 8/15/07, Naz Gassiep <naz(at)mira(dot)net> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I am still, after quite some time, wrangling over the time zone
> system in my app. I have sorted out all the internal handling, however I
> am still uncertain as to what the best way to get the user to select
> their time zone is.
>
> I was thinking of having users just select their timezones from a
> list which was populated with the contents of the query:
> select * from pg_timezone_names ;
> which would look something like this.
> http://mrnaz.com/tztest.html
>
> This however is problematic for a number of reasons:
>
> 1. The timezone list there isn't exactly user friendly, there are many
> Etc/* timezones there, as well as others that would be potentially
> confusing for users who are trying to select the timezone they are in.
> 2. If a timezone is removed from the list for whatever reason, then the
> system will be left with users who have selected a timezone that is no
> longer a valid choice in the list.

Do the views in 8.2 pg_timezone_abbrevs and pg_timezone_names help at all?