Re: [pve-devel] [PATCH installer] fix #4430: add UTC timezone as option to installer

[Thomas Lamprecht <t.lamprecht@proxmox.com>]

Am 15/03/2023 um 13:26 schrieb Christoph Heiss:
> The 'Etc/UTC' timezone does not have a definite 2-letter country code
> assigned. 'xx' was choosen on the basis that this hopefully will never
> be assigned to any real country in the future, but a small collision
> check won't hurt either.
> 
> This also means it does not have an entry in either the ISO-codes
> definition file nor the zoneinfo table, thus needing to define it
> manually.
> 
> Using just 'UTC' as timezone (name) also matches what PVE/PMG/PBS do in
> their UI.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Christoph Heiss <c.heiss@proxmox.com>
> ---
> Some bike-shedding: If there is a better suggestion on what country code
> to choose, I'll happily change it.

Something like xx is fine in general, it's the simplest way to integrate this,
so I'd base the exact used letters purely on sorting, 

> 
> Also, although the correct timezone name is 'Etc/UTC', I chose 'UTC' as
> "country name" to display in the installer to make it easier to find for
> users, as they probably will just type 'UTC' in there at first, rather
> than 'Etc'.
> 

That's fine too.


What I don't like as much that one has to set the country to the timezone,
which is confusing UX and will be subtle to most.

Better ways might be:

- add an explicit "Use UTC" checkbox that grey's out the country/timezone
  selection then. Disadvantage here would be taking up extra space and expanding
  the user input amount, which goes a bit against our "as simple as possible"
  approach for the installer

- Add UTC always to the time-zone selection, independent of what country is
  selected. This keeps the selection where it belongs, and allows to quickly
  change to UTC without any typing/searching required (at least for most countries)

From a gut feeling I'd go for the second option, but didn't checked out how the
implementation would then look like.